


Something Pretty

by ithoughtslashmeanthorror



Series: See how deep the bullet lies [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd-centric, Mother-Son Relationship, Non-Graphic Violence, Psychological Torture, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-20 16:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 63,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13721448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ithoughtslashmeanthorror/pseuds/ithoughtslashmeanthorror
Summary: The eight* mothers of Jason Peter Todd, and the one parent he needed.A series of one-shots.You don't have to read the other stories in this series to follow this one. You can if you want to, but you don't have to.*Used to be six, wrote two more chapters because inspiration struck.





	1. Catherine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catherine Todd gave birth, but didn't expect to become a mother. Now that she has a tiny baby, and she isn't quite sure what to do with him.  
> \- warning, some graphic stuff about giving birth and nakedness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> So, I read your comments, and you all told me to be chill about working on the story a bit at a time, soooo, I chilled.
> 
> And it made writing a whole lot easier.
> 
> I am feeling better about the next story in the series, but it's still not finished, therefore I am posting these one-shots, and will probably post on every 2 days.
> 
> To explain, I write snippets of things all the time, and these are all the discarded snippets of flashbacks that I've weaved together into this story about all the women in Jason's life.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it while I'm fleshing out the next part of the story.
> 
> Also clarification: I wasn't talking about the start of the whole series that I was going to redo. Just the start of the next story (titled: What have I become (my sweetest friend?))

The son of nineteen-year-old Catherine and twenty-six-year-old Willis Todd was born on a rooftop in Gotham’s Crime Alley to a junkie of a mother and her drug dealer of a boyfriend. His odds of survival were low, considering Catherine had been coming down from a high when her contractions had started, and soon after she had her arm twisted up in a rubber pipe to start another hit.

Most babies born on a dirty rooftop covered in hepatitis-infected needles would have died in the circumstance. The baby would have too if it hadn’t been for Catherine.

After Willis returned with a crying baby, Catherine – who had been passed out on the couch – flinched at his screeching. She looked up, lost and in a daze. “I thought you said he was going to Falcone,” she complained, trying to find a way to get comfortable.

“Falcone didn’t want him!” Willis shouted, and the baby swayed dangerously in his arms. “Said he didn’t want a child endangerment charge against him! He could sell that kid in an instant, for ten times the money I owe him! What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

The baby screamed louder and looked as if he was falling backwards and Catherine didn’t think it looked right. “You’re holding him wrong,” she said, reaching her hands out without thinking too much about it. Willis handed the newborn over to her, having had enough of him.

“Not a single fuckin’ cent!” Willis shouted out. “No one would take him when I went down to 31st street either! Said he fuckin’ screamed too much or something.”

Catherine agreed. The little baby in her arms quietened against her skin and looked for something blindly. “Oh, you hungry little guy?” Catherine stared at him, briefly aware in her stupor that this was her son. “Huh… Um…” She looked at her somewhat flat chest that hadn’t grown too much during her pregnancy. In fact, her belly hadn’t either and looking at the tiny thing in her arms she wondered if he had really grown at all. “I think this is right,” she said.

She pulled her right breast out of her tank and bra and let it hang out as she guided his face up to her nipple and he moved his face around and clamped on. “Ouch,” she hissed. But the baby had already spat out her dry nipple and was wailing.

“Shut him  _up_ , Cathy!” Willis shouted from the kitchen.

“I’m trying!” she yelled back at him, and she tried to push his face back on her boob. “Just eat, kid.” But she realised quickly that it wasn’t the baby that was the problem, but her lack of milk. “Shit. Willis! Do we have some milk or something?”

“Why the fuck would we have milk?”

“You might need to get some!”

“What the hell do I look like, Cathy? The milkman?!” Willis shouted.

Catherine shook her head, rolling her eyes. She tucked her breast back in and stood up. She groaned, grabbing her still tender body as it protested at moving. She’d already had a hell of a time trying to get down from the roof after Willis went to sell the kid. “Fuck,” she whispered looking down at her legs. Blood and gory things were sliding down both sides of her thighs and for the first time in a long while, she had a panging for her mother. She looked to Willis for help, and she could already see an empty bottle of beer out of the six-pack on the table as he sucked down half a bottle of the second.

She went into her room, where there was a small bathroom off to one side. With the baby still in her arms, Catherine climbed into the bathtub, holding one arm out to balance on her shaky feet and took off the handheld showerhead, pointing it away from her with the same arm that held the baby. She looked down at him and his little squashed up face and only then noticed that no one had washed him since he was born, and he was still covered in birth gunk. “Like mother, like son, huh kid?” she laughed to herself softly.

She knelt in the tub and put him down in the middle of it, taking off her top and skirt over her head. “It’s okay. We’ll both get clean.”

She sat in the tub, her legs on either side of the kid…  _her_ kid, and unwrapped him from the towel that Willis had hastily covered him in. As she washed the blood down from her legs and let the water soothe her swollen body, she also used the warm-ish water to rinse him off until he was flushed and pink and no longer covered in slime.

Out of the tub, she pulled on black tights and a crop top and tied up her hair and then found an old t-shirt of Willis’s to put the baby in, and found an old scarf that looked like a blanket to wrap him up even more in. Satisfied with her efforts, she waddled out of the house, still in a little bit of pain, and took Willis’s wallet from the table by the door. “I’m going out!” she hollered.

Willis grumbled something about cigarettes, and she ignored it. He’d be too drunk by the time she got home.

Catherine got lost halfway to the supermarket, still too drug-fucked to realise where she was going. In her stoned stupor, she ended up in an upper-class neighbourhood but didn’t know enough of them to say which one. It did have its own mall though, she walked inside and followed the signs to the closest supermarket.

That was when she found herself standing in front of a giant fridge full of milk. She had never realised how many kinds of milk there were. Full cream, fat, lactose-free, 2%, skim, white, rice, soy, almond… It was overwhelming, and at that moment her baby decided to start crying again, a high pitched wail that was enough to break eardrums. “Shush, shush, shush…” She tried to stop him crying, bouncing him up and down but found she couldn’t get him to shut up. “Oh, come on, kid… I don’t know what you eat.” She held him out at arm’s length, staring at him as some of the scarf she bound him with unwound. “Oh come on!”

Another woman, older and some sort of immigrant, – Catherine wasn’t sure what kind – came over and patted her on the shoulder. “You okay, dear? Do you need some help?” She held her hands out, and Catherine nodded desperately and handed the baby over.

“Hey there, little one,” the woman cooed softly in a heavy accent. Catherine flinched, scratching her cheek as she watched the woman grab the baby’s attention with a few words and some baby noises.  _I can do that,_ she thought. “It can be a bit stressful sometimes, huh?” the woman said.

“Yeah,” she replied and chewed on her nails. She pointed to the milk. “Do you know which one of these he should be drinking? I don’t drink much milk and I ain’t making any… I think he’s hungry.”

The woman looked down at the baby and then up at Catherine. “You his mom?”

Catherine nodded, spitting on the nail she’d just chewed off. “Yeah.”

“Didn’t any of the midwives tell you about formula or maybe even donor milk?” she asked gently.

Catherine had to stop herself from replying that she had only just given birth a few hours ago, as she realised it would be a not-normal thing to say. “I had aaah… A home birth. No doctors,” she replied, and the woman looked disapproving but not like she was about to call the cops. “So like… donor milk?”

“It might be easier to get some formula.” The woman nodded for Catherine to follow, still carrying the baby and walked towards another aisle. “Does he have a fever?” the woman asked.

Catherine shrugged. “I-I don’t know… I’m sort of new at this. He was only just born.” Catherine finished the sentence but blinked, when she remembered that wasn’t probably normal and maybe she was a lot higher than she first thought. “Like a week ago. He’s a week old.”

“Oh sweetie,” the woman cooed again to the baby as he began to cry, arms shaking. “You might want to take him to a chemist or something and get some medication. Maybe not bring him out too much, if he hasn’t gotten his shots.”

Catherine stored that information away. “Yeah. Okay.”

They stopped in an aisle, dedicated to tiny baby things, and Catherine looked around at dummies, spoons and cups and then her eyes landed on the big golden can that the woman was pointing out. “Now, my husband’s in neonatal, and he always recommends this.” She pointed at it until Catherine leant in and picked it up, turning the large canister around until she saw the price. It was twenty-five dollars. She took out Willis’s wallet and only found eight dollars and seventy-two cents. “Crap,” she muttered. “Ah, is there anything cheaper.”

The woman looked Catherine up and down and huffed. “Just take it. I’m going to guess you don’t have a bottle, so take that too. My name is Azra. You?”

“Catherine,” she said. “But my boyfriend calls me Cathy.”

The woman was barely suppressing her rolling eyes. “Of course he does. What do your parents call you?”

“Nothing… I haven’t seen them for a few years.”

Azra’s demeanour softened. “That’s unfortunate. I’m sure they’d love to know their grandbaby.”

If Catherine’s parents ever found out she had Willis Todd’s baby and married him because of it, they’d kill her. “Ah, maybe…” she trailed off, not sure what else to say.

In the end, Azra bought and paid for a dummy, diapers enough for at least a month, two bottles, the formula and a week pack of onesies that had tiny teddy bears on the front of them and mittens on the wrist. “Now come on. We’ve got to run to the pharmacy before it shuts.”

Catherine followed her like a lost puppy carrying the bags as Azra cooed and coddled the baby. At the pharmacy, she spoke to the pharmacist, telling him the baby had a slight temperature. Together they organised some baby Tylenol and bought a thermometer that was supposed to be inserted in the baby’s butt. “Is… is that allowed?” Catherine whispered. It seemed like something illegal that shouldn’t be done to little kids, but Azra looked at her like she was the crazy one.

Admittedly, she probably was.

“Okay, this should be all he needs for a long while,” Azra said. She didn’t pick up any of the bags, her attention wrapped up in the baby. He had worn himself out. “He needs to eat good food to grow up big and strong, like Hercules,” she fussed in a childish voice, her eyes never leaving his face. “He is pretty. What did you say his name was?”

Catherine hadn’t.

Because she didn’t know.

Willis and Catherine hadn’t named him yet. They never planned to keep him. Willis had been sure he could sell him, but now Catherine wasn’t so sure she wanted to.

She liked the name, Hercules. It was strong, and she wanted the baby to grow up strong like all the Greek myths did, but Hercules Todd didn’t roll off the tongue. Hercules did remind her of another Greek myth, one she had liked as a child. “Ummm… Jason,” she said. “Like Jason and the Argonauts. The golden sheep and stuff.”

“Fleece,” the woman corrected lightly. She looked down at the baby – Jason, and softly said, “Well you be good for your Mamma now, Jason. She looks a little tired, and I’m sure you’ve had her worried.” She looked up at Catherine and said, “I got the Tylenol as back up, but I don’t think he looks too bad. Sometimes all newborn’s need is skin contact, so hold him against your chest while you’re feeding him and see if that works before you try any medication.”

After about an hour of shopping together, Azra held Jason out to Catherine, and she took him gratefully in amongst her shopping. “Thanks,” she said. “Really, thanks. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

“Being a mom takes practice. Trust me. I have five, and they’re mostly adults… I still get overwhelmed.”

Catherine’s smile faltered, and she said goodbye to the woman looked down at Jason in her arms. Adult. She was going to be in charge of that kid until he was an adult.

She went home in a daze, finding her way back by asking for some directions, and hid the bags under the bed so Willis wouldn’t find them. She read the instructions on the back of the formula and carefully made a bottle up for Jason while Willis was passed out on the dining table.

When it was all ready, Catherine sat on the back of the bed with a towel under her because she was still bleeding between her legs. She took off her shirt slowly and took Jason out of his clothes, figuring skin contact meant both of their skins and pressed the bottle to his lips. “Come on Jason,” Catherine whispered. “Come on. Drink up.”

It took some coaxing, but Jason eventually took the nipple of the bottle and started drinking with fervour. He spread his arms out over Catherine, trying to spread himself on as much of her chest as he possibly could, and Catherine just watched him in awe and wondered as every little thing he did became fascinating to her. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I could be your mom, I think. I think this won’t be too bad.” She rubbed his soft cheek and smiled. “Yeah. Jason Peter Todd,” she thought, adding her maiden name and Willis’s surname to his. “You know, little JP, that lady was right. You really are pretty. I think I love you… yeah. Yeah, I definitely love you. You know why? Cause I’m your Mamma.”

She was his mother.

But she wasn’t ever going to be a good one.

But she wasn’t the worst either.

Because the bathtub where she’d washed them in was the same one Jason would haul her into nine years later when she was overdosing, hoping the water would wake her up like it had all the times before. But, when it didn’t, Jason would sprawl himself over her chest again, like he did the first time, and cry against her cold skin as the water poured on their heads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed.
> 
> Tell me what you think, because I never really do these 6 shot things...
> 
> Guess who the next mother is? I'm going to add the tags as I go so I don't spoil anything, but I'm pretty sure everyone can guess who the 6 mother's are.


	2. Selina

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Selina knew what it was like to be Jason Todd, so it was the least she could do to help him adjust to the Manor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry if you got the alert for this yesterday. I used Grammarly to edit this, but because I'm on a Mac it won't let me do it straight in Word and if I use the Grammarly program, it deletes my italics.
> 
> I meant to click 'Save without Posting' but ended up pressing 'Post without Preview'. I didn't realise what I'd done for about ten minutes, but I hadn't actually finished editing/reading/polishing it up.
> 
> So here is the actual chapter.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! :)

Selina had heard about the kid Bruce was bringing home. He’d been living at the orphanage for the last few months, and Bruce had been training him in secret, and spending time with the boy in public to make his intention of adopting him clear. Right now they were in the Manor, taking the grand tour which would end in the introduction of Dick and Selina. It had all been mapped out and laid out to them like a mission plan, and Selina and Dick had taken their orders and obeyed.

Dick wasn’t happy about it, and Selina could see it all over the thirteen-year-old’s face. Not that he wanted to show it. He was trying to look normal, to shove it in Bruce’s face about how okay he was with Bruce replacing him as Robin.

(He wasn’t, and Selina had to be a go-between for many arguments between them about it… she had no side. Both had fair points. Bruce had told Dick he was grounding Robing permanently, but Dick had gone and created the Nightwing persona. Both were right, both were wrong, and both were stubborn)

They were sat in one of the smaller living rooms, the one Dick used for a games room, and they matched each other’s positions, lying back on the couch with their feet up on the table. Alfred would kill them for having their feet up on the mahogany, but he was too busy getting trays of cookies and dinner ready for their new guest and hadn't seen them yet.

Dick had been playing with his phone but seemed to be too distracted with his thoughts, and Selina had been playing with her phone but mostly because she couldn’t figure out how to make the face filters work and she didn’t want to have to ask Dick. He would just roll his eyes at her and show her in a low, slow voice like she was  _dumb_  and  _old_ , but she wasn’t even thirty and could hack the CIA so goddammit, she could figure out how to put cat ears on her photos.

“Why are you here?” Selina asked him when the boredom started to creep in. “I thought you said you’d rather die than see another kid in your Robin suit.”

Dick narrowed his eyes, glaring at a photo of Bruce and him on the fireplace. “I said that I’d  _kill_  anyone who tried to  _wear_  my Robin suit, but Bruce realised that was an empty threat.” He grumbled the last part playing with the hem of his t-shirt. “Anyway, I’m here to make my assessment. I mean, I’ve seen him. I watched them training a few times from the rafters. But that’s just training. It’s how you adapt in the field that’s the important part. But if he’s a bad Robin, he’s not going out with Bruce. He may not think Robin is important, but Robin keeps him alive. There is no Batman without Robin.”

“There was a Batman for six years before you became Robin.” Selina pointed out, with a wry smile.

“Robin made Batman better.”

“How are you going to assess how he is in the field if he’s not going out until you assess him?”

Dick turned bright red, growing frustrated. “Don’t you have a tree you can go get stuck in?”

Selina laughed. She knew she was arguing with a child, but she was bored and picking on Dick was one of her favourite past times. She also knew he liked Diana the Wonder Woman better than her. Not that he didn’t like Selina – he had spent many a night asleep on her couch that proved he very much did enjoy her company. But bickering with him reminded her of a time before Bruce was so sure of himself. “Oh Dickiebird, you crack me up.”

Dick glared at her. “Why are you even here? I heard the Queen’s crown jewels are visiting Gotham Museum.”

Selina smiled. “They arrive tomorrow, and Bruce has already been slyly looking through my things for blueprints. It’s the cutest thing.”

“Stick them on the underside of your bed. He never looks there. Only touches it.”

“Way ahead of you. Anyway, I’m here because I want to meet this kid who captured your Dad’s attention. I thought I was the only stray he brought home from Crime Alley.”

The frown on Dick’s face deepened, and he pulled his phone out again. “Well hopefully he keeps Bruce’s attention, or else he’ll end up getting kicked out too.”

Selina flinched as she saw the utter despair in the boy’s face. She had spoken to Bruce time and time again, trying to explain to him the fact that Dick was just a kid who didn’t understand why his father was punishing him. But in his mind, Bruce was protecting Dick, and he couldn’t understand why Dick couldn’t see that. “Dick, Bruce didn’t kick you out.”

“Yes, he did. He told me if I wasn’t going to listen to him, I could get out and leave the Robin suit,” Dick muttered.

“Of the cave, Dick.” Selina had heard Bruce say that a hundred times since everything had blown up a second time. It had been almost a year since Dick donned the Robin costume, and it was only even more recently that Dick stayed over at the Manor, once or twice a week. He wasn’t going to school, and he had made his own team, called the Teen Titans with a few of the other sidekicks. “You weren’t sleeping. You overworked yourself, and you made a mistake that almost cost you your life.”

“But it didn’t.”

“Because Bruce saved your ass!” Selina sat up straight and planted her feet on the ground, getting angry at him. “You know better than anyone that Bruce isn’t good with his feelings. How do you think he felt finding you in an  _alley_  three streets up from where his parents got killed, knock unconscious, without back up, with a gun to your head? If it had been me, I would’ve locked you in your room and never let you see the light of day again. Hell, I almost  _did_  do that, because even I was worried when I found out. But Bruce let you go stay with Clark and Lois because he was afraid you’d hate him if he tried stopping you.”

Dick didn’t say anything in response, probably because he knew Selina was right and he was too stubborn to admit it. “You’re exactly like him,” Selina huffed, falling back into her position, kicking her boots up on the table.

“Miss Kyle, feet off the table!” Alfred scolded as he came in.

Dick straightened up too, and Selina pulled her feet down, annoyed she’d been caught, and he hadn’t. “Sorry, Alfred,” she muttered, and the butler just stepped aside to reveal Bruce holding the shoulders a skinny runt of a kid, with a garbage bag in his hand. Dick was assessing him, but the fact was, so was Selina.

She didn’t like when the Bat went out on his own, and the months since Robin had left the scene were some of the most worrying of her life. At least with Dick around, if Bruce went and did something stupid, Dick could get him help but this new kid – short for his age, with jet black hair and pale blue sapphires for eyes – looked like he’d jump into the fray before he even considered getting help.

It made her nervous.

“Master Richard, Miss Selina, this is Master Jason,” Alfred said.

Jason was studying them just as intently as Selina and Dick were studying him. It had taken some time to get him out of the system, due to his criminal record, which was impressively small compared to what Selina had found out about him.

He was a lot more active in the criminal community than the GCPD gave him credit for, acting as a runner for the Falcone’s, a well-known tyre thief for the local chop shop, and well known for refusing to work with drug dealers and or human trafficking rings. She’d actually seen him once or twice, and when she’d been curious, she’d poked at one of Maroni’s men for more information.

“He’s a criminal with standards,” he’d told her. “The kid will help anyone who can pay him, and sometimes help people who can’t. Especially kids. He’s got a soft spot for ‘em, no matter which gang they're attached to.”

Selina had followed Jason’s career for a few years since that encounter, but she had never thought he would end up with Bruce.

He seemed good enough, but he’d landed himself in juvie when he was eleven for a year for grand theft auto and driving into a corner shop, and the fact he was caught made her nervous. “You can say hello,” Bruce said, squeezing Jason’s shoulders lightly.

“Hi,” Jason said, still unsure of himself. His eyes studied Dick, sizing him up and checking to see if he was a threat. Selina remembered being in foster care, and that was the first thing you had to do. Make sure the other kids weren’t going to hurt you.

“Hey. My name is Richard, but you can call me Dick.” Dick stepped forward, holding his hand out.

A small smile crept onto Jason’s face as he studied the outstretched hand. “Dick? You want me to call you a Dick?”

Dick glared at him, and removed the hand, crossing it over his chest. “My name is Dick. Short for Richard.”

“It’s also short for penis.”

“Boys,” Bruce scolded lightly. “Jason, it’s his name. Don’t be rude.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I’ve heard a lot worse.” He looked up at Bruce. “If this is over, I’m going to Clark’s.”

“Dick,” Selina said. “What were we just talking about?” Dick glared at her but didn’t move.

“Who is this?” Jason asked, eyeing Selina up and down. “The mom?”

Selina laughed. “You wish, kid. Selina Kyle. I’m Bruce’s girlfriend, and no one’s mother.”

“That’s fine. I don’t need a mother, and I don’t need a father.” He pulled out of Bruce’s grasp and stepped aside. “I just want to be Robin.”

Dick looked as if he was biting his tongue, hard in his mouth. “Well the first step was to get you out of the system,” Bruce said. “Right now, I’m fostering you, but I should be able to adopt you as soon as the paper’s from your father come through.”

“I don’t care,” Jason muttered, glaring at the ground, his cheeks flushed. His too long hair covered his eyes and face.

Selina looked at Bruce. He’d told her that his father was dead, thrown in jail for a failed robbery attempt and killed for snitching. Bruce caught her staring and shook his head slightly. She knew he would explain it later, but for now, he was watching Jason with a sad, aching expression and Alfred had the same one. Something had happened on the tour.

“Jay, how about we go leave that stuff in your room now?” Bruce said. He looked at Selina.

Jason’s jaw twitched. “I can carry it.”

Selina remembered that feeling too. Like everyone was going to steal your stuff, and you had to always keep it guarded. She looked at Alfred and Bruce who were both desperate to speak to each other alone and then at Dick who was as annoyed as ever. “Actually Jason, you should throw it all out,” Selina said.

Jason’s head snapped up to look at her, eyes wide with fear. Even Bruce was eyeing her warily. “I mean it’s already in the garbage bag, it won’t be too hard. B, wallet.” Selina held her hand out and Bruce, after a moment, took his wallet out and handed it to her.

She pocketed it and grabbed Dick’s shoulder. “We’re taking Jason shopping.”

“He just got here,” Bruce said. “Maybe he should settle in?”

“Nope.” Selina took Jason by the shoulder and pushed him along too. “Leave the trash. You’re a Wayne now, kid. You’ve got to look like a Wayne, and hopefully before dinner because you reek. Have you ever washed your shirt?” Jason didn’t drop the bag but did let her push him and Dick down the hall, away from Bruce and Alfred towards the garage. At the very least, it would give the two of them a chance to talk about whatever happened on Jason’s Manor tour.

“Yeah. They give each of us our own personal laundromat at Gotham’s Wayward Children.” Jason rolled his eyes.

“Really? That’s a lot fancier than what they gave me when I was there.”

Jason’s head snapped up to Selina. “You were Gotham’s Wayward Children?”

“For four hellish months, yes. Until I broke out.”

That shut Jason up, and he clutched his garbage bag to his chest tighter, but his eyes narrowed as he got lost deep in thought.

They got to the garage where Bruce’s many cars and bikes were parked, including both Dick and Selina’s motorcycle. Jason was distracted by the cars and walked a little way ahead to look around while Dick pulled away from Selina and went to his bike. “Thanks for the escape route. Now I’m going to Metropolis.”

“Are you serious?” Selina snapped. “Dick, get your ass here now.”

“You’re no one’s mother, Selina. Remember?” Dick grabbed his helmet from the back of his bike, but Selina quickly checked that Jason was too absorbed by the cars, then followed him, grabbing his motorcycle by the handlebars and standing in front of him.

“No, but you’re someone’s brother now,” she snapped, lowering her voice. “B needs you. Whether or not you want to give up Robin, taking that kid off the streets of Gotham was the right thing to do, and you know it. So be the good person I know you are and help me distract this kid because you and I both know Alfie and Bruce were worried about something up there.”

Dick glared at her and shot a look over her shoulder to Jason. He was kneeling down, peering underneath a Ferrari, and Dick closed his eyes and sighed. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

Selina sighed a little, relieved that it hadn’t been too hard to get Dick to relent, and they took the Hummer and went to High Street. Jason still kept his garbage bag on him, clutching the top of it tightly and stared out the window in the backseat, Dick riding shotgun. Selina kept looking over her shoulder at Jason and decided to ask some questions. “So, how long were you in Gotham Wayward for?”

Jason shrugged. “I don’t know… Three months this time. Since Bruce caught me stealing tyres.” His hair was matted, and Selina’s lip twinged. Bruce should have gotten him out of there straight away, but as he kept reminding her, after all the shitty rumours that went around about Bruce’s relationship with Dick when he adopted him, Bruce Wayne couldn’t just turn up with a young boy from the streets without raising suspicions. “But I’ve been in there before. On and off for my whole life, really.”

Selina shot Dick, and he sighed, staring out the opposite window guiltily. “Okay, so Alfie’s been preparing some big fancy dinner all day, and we only have a few hours to get you a whole new wardrobe. Also, ain’t there that gala coming up?”

“It’s in two weeks, and Bruce is going to get Jason a suit,” Dick muttered.

“Okay, but I can get him shoes.”

“On Bruce’s card,” Dick added.

“I’m picking them out.” Selina turned into a parking spot and got out of the car. Dick and Jason did too, but Jason brought out his garbage bag with him. “No, kid, you can leave that in the car.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “What if someone steals the car?”

“No one is going to steal the car.”

“It’s a nice car. If I were gonna steal any car on the street, it would be this one.”

Selina rolled her eyes, and Dick smirked, finding amusement in Selina’s frustration. “Fine! Take the damn bag.”

Jason looked satisfied and clutched the bag to his chest. Selina rolled her eyes and walked towards the kids clothing shops. She hadn’t been to a kids store since she was a kid and Dick had to guide them to where the boy's clothes were.

“Okay, Jason. I don’t know what you like so why don’t you just go and get anything.”

Jason stood firmly by her side, glaring up at her. “Anything?” he said.

“Anything,” she repeated.

“You’re just going to buy me whatever I want?”

“Bruce is going to buy you whatever you want,” Dick muttered under his breath, but Selina and Jason ignored him.

“Yes, Jason,” Selina said. “Anything.”

Jason stared at her unsurely, but there was something curious in his eyes. He hesitated then went ahead and looked at the first rack where there was a t-shirt. He felt the material and looked over his shoulder at Selina for approval. “Dick, why don’t you help him? Go grab him some shirts and ties and stuff to wear to those weird lunches Bruce’s people like organising so much? That way we can get this done quicker.”

Dick rolled his eyes then looked at Jason, estimating his size, and disappeared into the racks. “Meet us in the change room!” Selina called out.

Jason was still nervous, eyeing each and every item of clothing as he passed it and reading their price. “How many things can I get?” he asked.

“As many as you like,” she answered.

“What if I pick something super expensive?”

“The more expensive it is, the happier it’ll make me. I’ve been trying to break Bruce’s bank account for years.”

There was a look of distrust on his face, and Jason hauled his garbage bag up and ended up collecting some t-shirts. “I can hold the trash if you want,” Selina offered.

Jason considered this and then handed her the clothes he was picking up instead. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Whatever kid.”

Jason’s fashion choices were very plain. Jeans, t-shirts and a few pairs of shorts. He grabbed about ten pairs of identical looking pants but stopped when he saw Dick holding at least sixty items of clothing outside the change rooms. There were formal pants in grey, cream and navy in there and the same shirt in various colours along with a few plaid flannel shirts and t-shirts with Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman symbols on it. The Wonder Woman was no doubt, to get at Selina. “I can’t try all of that on,” Jason said.

“You don’t have to. Try one of them on for size, then pick out the colours you like.” Dick grabbed a shirt and pants and threw it at him. “There.”

Jason looked over all the stuff and muttered, “No pink,” and took a few of the shirts before he went into the change room with the garbage bag and all the stuff he’d picked out with Selina.

“Too much?” Dick asked.

Selina reached into the pile and fished out the Wonder Woman t-shirt and held it up in front of her. “Really?”

“They don’t sell criminal t-shirts here,” he said, snatching the t-shirt back and placing them all on a chair next to the change room. “And I don’t think Jason would appreciate the Hello Kitty tee I found in homage to you.”

Selina wrapped her arm around Dick’s neck, dragging him into her side and ruffled up his hair. “You’re a little pain in the ass, you know that right?”

Dick shoved her away, but he was laughing. “Yeah, and time spent with you is always delightful. I’m going to go get shoes.”

“No Flash ones!” Selina called out.

“Only Flash ones!” Dick replied.

With Dick gone again, Selina was left to wait outside the change rooms, tapping her foot impatiently. Ten minutes went by, and she wondered if Jason knew he was supposed to show her what he’d picked out so she could help him make a decision, and decided he probably didn’t. So, she went in and spotted a line of mom’s all standing out their sons' doors wearing jeans and those fancy blazers that all the mom’s in Gotham’s upper class wore – to soccer games, to parent-teacher interviews, and to playdates with pearls and expensive leather handbags strung over their arm. Selina, on the other hand, was wearing her leather pants and a biker jacket and fingerless gloves. She smiled saltily at one of the step-ford wives who glared at her as she went by, and found the only door that was shut and had no one hovering outside of it.

“Hey, kid,” Selina knocked on the door, leaning on it and tucking her hands into the back of her very tight pants. “You gonna show me what any of that looks like?”

“No,” came the sullen reply.

Selina rolled her eyes. Bruce really was going to have her hands full with this kid. “You went in there with fifty things… does it not fit or something?”

The door opened, and Selina had to catch herself but recovered quickly and stepped inside. Jason slammed the door shut behind her and was sitting on the chair in the corner, still in the same jeans and oversized t-shirt that he’d left in, surrounded but dozens of things and clutching that damn garbage bag to his chest. “These clothes are clean,” Jason said.

Selina nodded. “Yeah. And?”

Jason ground his teeth together and couldn’t look Selina in the eye. “I haven’t been able to have a shower in a week… or wash any of my clothes. The other kids found out I was getting fostered and because I was the last one in, they thought I should’ve been the last one out or something. They were mad at me and wouldn’t let me clean anything as some screwed up punishment.” His cheeks were bright red, and he kept his eyes darting to each of the mirrors that were on all the walls, trying to settle on a spot where he wasn’t looking at himself. “I don’t want to dirty the clothes,” he muttered.

“Why didn’t you say anything at the Manor? I would have waited for you to have a shower,” Selina said.

Jason looked at her incredulously. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on! Plus, if I said something maybe Bruce wouldn’t want me to be Robin anymore. I mean, I couldn’t figure out how to get a bunch of kids to let me shower.”

 _Shit Bruce, you went and found a kid more screwed up than you._  Selina knelt in front of Jason and laid her hand on his knee. “Try on the clothes, kid. If you dirty them, screw it. We’ll get the exact same thing but clean, but I know for a fact Alfred washes new clothes before he lets anyone wear them. After this though, I’ll take you to one of my safe houses. It’s nearby, and you can shower, and we’re getting you a haircut.” Selina made a face at his matted hair. “Or we can just get it all and whatever you realise doesn’t fit you, we can give to an orphanage… Another orphanage though. Those shitheads don’t deserve your discards.”

Jason smiled a little at that and looked around the place. “We can get all of this?”

Selina nodded. “Of course.”

“Bruce won’t get mad?”

“Kid, you can get three times this much and Bruce wouldn’t bat an eye. Not if it made you happy.”

Jason looked all around and slowly nodded his head. “Can we still go to your safe house to shower? I don’t want Bruce finding out… Or Dick.” His voice got a little harder around the ex-Robin’s name, and Selina sighed.

“That’s fine. But can I give you a little advice with Dick?” Jason narrowed his eyes as Selina said his name. “He’s gonna love you, really, really quickly,” Selina said, knowing that would be the case. Because no matter how much Dick wanted to angry at Bruce, he was a sucker for kids and would no doubt be a sucker for Jason once it kicked into his stubborn head that he had a little brother. “Knowing him, he’s going to love you so much that it'll make you uncomfortable. Cause he’s not like those kids. He will never hurt you, or try to punish you for getting him into trouble. He’ll take punishment for you once he realises how much you mean to him.”

Jason’s eyes were blurring with tears, and he still wouldn’t look at her. “But until he gets his stubborn head out of his ass, don’t go after him too much. Robin was his, and he lost it because he screwed up, though he won’t ever admit it. He’s just hurting right now, and it’s got nothing to do with you and everything to do with Bruce.”

After a full minute, Jason nodded his head and whispered, “I’ll try.”

“Good.” Selina got up and stretched out. “Now let’s just collect all this crap and go. Except for the Wonder Woman shirt. Leave that here.”

Jason hesitated. “I… I actually like Wonder Woman.”

Selina rolled her eyes. “Of  _course,_  you do.” She took out a pack of gum from her back pocket and began to chew. She opened the door and held her hand out. “I’ll take the garbage bag, you take everything else.”

And without batting an eye, or thinking about it, Jason held the garbage bag out and let Selina take it. She threw it over her shoulder and stepped out, pulling her aviators down and popping her gum loudly.

Right outside the door, looking ashamed of himself was Dick, holding boxes of shoes. He’d obviously heard them talking, and was looking at anything except for Selina. “Come on, Pretty Birds; we’re blowing this joint.”

Dick smiled and went on ahead and grabbed the pile of things he’d left on the chair and they went to the cashier. They bought it all and went to the pharmacy next and bought a toothbrush and some other stuff before they went up to one of Selina’s safe houses on the prettier side of Gotham.

“Get ready,” Selina said, throwing Jason a random bag. She dropped the rest on the ground as Dick made himself comfortable on the couch. “Dick and I decided we don’t like the look of the other kid Bruce brought home, so we’re taking him a new one. We will be out here finding you a new haircut.”

Jason smiled a little as he went into the room and Selina sat on the sofa next to Dick, shoulder to shoulder. Dick pulled up a haircut and showed it to Selina, and she shook her head. “We’re not taking him home with a Mohawk. B would kill me.”

Dick found another one and Selina rolled her eyes at it. “Come on, be creative. You’re the boy who designed a red, green and yellow suit without looking like a weird Christmas bauble.”

They went back and forth like that on various hairstyles until they settled on a medium length crew cut. They waited for Jason and Dick leant his head-on Selina’s shoulder, and she froze for a second before relaxing into it. “He’s gonna be a pain in my ass, isn’t he?” Dick murmured, flicking through more pictures for fun.

“That’s what little brothers are, I’m told,” Selina replied quietly.

Dick sighed dramatically and tilted his head back. “You’re going to be a great mom one day.”

Something warm spread inside of her chest and she smiled down at Dick considering all that it would mean to be in Bruce’s life in the long term. He came with more responsibilities than the average guy. His work for Wayne Enterprise, his work for Batman and the paparazzi that were already catching onto the fact that Bruce hadn’t been taking his usual string of models to any of the functions and were pondering why. But more importantly, there were two boys that he was attached to who meant the world to him, even though he found it hard to verbalise.

If she were to stick around in his life, it would mean being in Dick and Jason’s lives too. Bruce would expect her to look after them before him… before herself.

Oddly, that idea didn’t scare her.

“I mean, not as good as Wonder Woman, but good,” Dick added, dragging her out of her thoughts.

“You’re a little shit,” Selina growled, poking him in his side and making him laugh. He was thirteen but laughed like a five-year-old, tilting his head back and squirming around. Bruce did a good job with Dick, making sure he didn’t turn out like him.

“Um…” Jason came out of the bedroom with wet hair, wearing a black pair of jeans and a red shirt with a leather jacket Dick had found him. His old clothes bundled up in his arms and the garbage bag by his side. “Is this okay?”

“You look good,” Dick said, nodding with approval.

“Really good. I knew there was a human being under all that dirt.” Selina got up as Jason chuckled. Selina did eye the garbage bag though, and she went into the closet and pulled out a black duffle back and threw it at him. He dropped his dirty clothes and caught the bag easily, and Selina swung her hands up to her hips. “Can we get rid of the bag now?”

He blushed and looked down at the garbage bag. “Yeah, um… okay.” He knelt on the hardwood and emptied the whole contents of the bag on the ground. Inside was a photo album, a wallet, a woman’s necklace, some clothes, an old toothbrush and some dog-eared books. Jason carefully put the books and photo album in the duffle bag, and then the wallet and woman’s necklace in his pockets. After a little bit of deliberation, he put all the clothes back into the garbage bag except the t-shirt he’d been wearing, which he folded neatly and put in the duffle.

When he stood up, he held out the garbage bag. “We can chuck these.”

“Great!” Selina took the bag and walked it straight over to the chute, opening the gaping hole and throwing it all down. Jason didn’t even blink. “Now we’ll get your hair cut, and go home for dinner.”

“After ice cream,” Dick said.

Selina was about to scold Dick because Alfred would kill her if she got the boys filled up on ice cream for dinner, but Jason’s face perked up so much that she caved. “Shit. Great. Okay, after ice cream. But  _only_  if you two promise not to tell Alfred.”

Without even looking at each other, both boys drew a cross over the left sides of their chest. “Cross my heart, hope to die,” they said together and quickly looked at each other with a mixture of awe and surprise.

Selina grinned.  _Not as good as Wonder Woman,_ she thought to herself with a scoff and with that, dragged both the boys to their feet and decided they could have all the ice cream they wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Selina is mom 2. 
> 
> Some people have guessed a lot of them correctly. This whole chapter started, because of this very clear image I had in my head of Selina dressed in leather storming out of the change rooms with Dick and Jason trailing behind her and popping bubblegum in a woman's face as she stared at her in horror.
> 
> Azra from the previous chapter btw, is my own creation and is based on my grandmother, who we lost last year. She had, on many occasions, taken in new mum's and given them things and taught them how to look after their babies.
> 
> Back when immigrants weren't really liked in Australia, there wasn't a lot of support for new immigrant mothers and she could speak many, many languages (Turkish, English, Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Ugoslavian, Arabic, Romanian and a few dialects of Romani) and loved kids so helped out and would often buy these women all the stuff they needed because they weren't sure what they should get. She'd helped out a few young Australian women too, and it always surprised me how racist a lot of them were, until after she'd showed them how to get their kids to stop crying every minute of every other day.
> 
> She won't be making another appearance, but still... she's my favourite.


	3. Barbara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barbara wasn't Jason's mother, but she couldn't help but mother him, especially when he looked like the world had fallen apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna post this tomorrow but I finished editing it and... whatever *throws papers up in the air... walks away*

Batgirl took off her suit gingerly, rubbing her shoulder before putting her things away and stepping into the showers in the cave.

It was purple already, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to hide it from her Dad. Of course, there was a first aid kit in the Batcave, but that wasn’t going to fix the fifty shades of blue and purple that were battered across her side.

The night had been bad.

Real bad.

Batman and Robin were trying to stop Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn from robbing the Gotham Museum blind when a full-scale riot broke out in Blackgate. What Batman and even Catwoman didn’t know, was that Harley had planned Gotham Museum stunt as a distraction so Joker could break out of Blackgate without Batman interfering.

Thankfully Batgirl and Nightwing had been around – on a date, but still about – and got down to the prison to keep things contained. Batman and Robin couldn’t get there in time and were needed later in the city. Though Dick and Barbara had done their best, they hadn’t been good enough, and some of the prisoners got free, and Bruce and Jason had to recapture a dozen of Blackgate’s criminals.

Nineteen civilian deaths had been confirmed, but there were more in critical condition, and a few were missing. Fifteen guards were confirmed dead, and there were almost as many cops fighting for their lives from the GCPD. Her Dad had phoned her and told Barbara to stay with the Wayne’s for the evening. Her brother James was at their grandparent’s house for the weekend, and he didn’t want her home alone.

She got out of the shower, and Dick was sitting in the locker room, staring blankly into space with only a towel around his waist. He hadn’t gotten into the shower yet, still shining with sweat, but she understood. Sometimes, it was hard to move after a night like that. She crept into his vision, and he looked up wearily at her. “Rough night?”

Dick nodded slowly and eyed her shoulder. “You should get that checked out.”

“I will,” she said, rolling the joint and flinching when she couldn’t get through the full rotation. “You should get _that_ checked out.” She pointed to the coloured bruises up and down his torso. “Did you break anything?”

“No. Maybe a fracture,” he said, touching it gingerly. “Rain check our date?” he asked, trying to sound optimistic, but also dismissing anything else happening between them for the evening. They were both drained, mentally, physically and emotionally and Barbara was glad he said it before she did.

Barbara nodded. Neither of them had to apologise for it. They were heroes of the night. Things happened, and they understood that. But she leant down and pressed her lips to his. Dick sighed into the kiss, pulling her between his legs and cupped her cheek. “I love you, Babs,” he murmured. It may have been weird for other couples who just begun dating to say things like that, but Barbara had been friends with Dick for six years and fought at his back for four of them. They weren’t the same as other people.

“I love you too,” she whispered back, and she chastely kissed him again, straightening up and wrapping her arms around his back. He rested his face against her chest and closed his eyes. She let him, more than content to be wrapped around his warm body. His hand wandered up and down her back, and his lips moved against the bare skin above her breastbone, pressing small kisses and mumbling words softly into her skin. Barbara felt an energy in the room stirring quietly between them, as she slid her arm down his back, and rubbed gentle circles between the blades.

It was something she wanted. Something she wanted with  _him_ of all people. But it wasn’t something she wanted right now. It wasn’t the right time or the right moment. She didn’t want to look back and remember how so many people had died the night they first…

She ran a hand through his hair and kissed his forehead again. “Go. Shower. You stink, Goldie.”

“Okay,” he agreed but rested there for a moment longer until Barbara slowly pulled away. Dick followed her with his eyes, looking as if he’d just woken up from a dream. She felt like she had, her muscles protesting at moving as all the adrenaline ran dry. She tightened her towel around herself and went to the locker, and just before she turned the corner, Dick pushed himself up onto his feet wearily and went into the showers.

Alone, Barbara let her towel drop and took out some lotion, rubbing it up and down her legs and arms. The uniform dried out her skin, and she chaffed when she wasn’t in it. But she’d let her whole body go as rough as sandpaper if it meant being Batgirl forever.

She pulled on her a soft green long sleeve and black yoga pants and some socks she could wear across the cave floor. In the cave was Bruce at the computer, staring at the screen without focusing on anything. He was in his suit but had taken off the cowl, and it sat on the table next to him.

She went over it him, arms crossed over her chest and warily shifted from foot to foot. “B,” she whispered.

Bruce didn’t respond, still focused on his thoughts. “Bruce,” she said a little louder.

He snapped out of his trance and looked up at her as if seeing her for the first time. Bruce cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “Sorry, Barbara. I didn’t see you there.”

That was a worrying idea. Batman not noticing something. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Bruce nodded. “I didn’t sustain any injuries.”

“No, not like…” Barbara cut herself off. “Dick and I made it to Gotham in time to see your showdown with The Catwoman. I know you two fight when you’re in costume but… We’ve never seen anything like that before. Is everything between the two of you okay?”

Bruce didn’t reply, and Barbara deflated a little. She liked Bruce and Selina together. If for nothing else, that they brought out the best in each other. Bruce was happier when he was with her, and a little more carefree, and Selina took care of herself better and lit up around Bruce. They were on separate sides of the law, but they’d always managed to sort that out before.

But then again, no one had ever died because of it before. “Bruce,” Barbara said, creeping forward but Bruce stopped her with a hand. After a minute she sighed and realised there was no hope.

“Let me wrap your shoulder,” Bruce said, barely glancing at her as he went for the first aid kit. She sighed and agreed, taking her top back off and clutching her shirt to her chest for some modesty. She’d been on the medical table half naked before, a bullet wound to her other shoulder and before that, burning up with a fever from Ivy’s plants and stripped and changed out of her uniform after they’d thrown her in an ice bucket. But just because Bruce had seen her bare before, didn’t mean she couldn’t at least try to cover up in front of her mentor

She sat up on the medical table as Bruce laid out the equipment beside her, removing his gauntlets from his hands. He probed the area with his fingers, and she winced and hissed appropriately, giving him an indication of how bad it was. “How’d it happen?”

“Pipe to the shoulder. The armour took some of the blow.”

“I don’t want you out for the rest of the week,” Bruce said, taking out some bruise cream and gently rubbing it in. When she opened her mouth to protest, he shook his head. “Some dangerous people got out tonight. If you’re not one hundred percent, I don’t want any of you risking it.”

She deflated and stared off over his shoulder, annoyed at herself for letting that psycho get a jump on her. Bruce braced her shoulder with tape and bandages, taking up most of her upper body. He added an extra layer that held an icepack in place, then brushed off her hair that got caught in the wrapping. “That should hold it for the night, but I might call Leslie in the morning,” he said, stepping back and letting her pull her top back on. She did so gingerly, but the strap bound her shoulder tight enough that the pressure was already holding off the pain. “You and Dick did well tonight.”

Barbara normally would have glowed beneath a compliment like that from Batman, but the weary look on his face and the knowledge of all the people they’d let escape weighed heavy on her mind. “We let so many people escape.”

“You stopped a whole lot more,” Bruce said. “And I spoke with your father. He said all the injuries sustained to the guard and officers in Blackgate occurred before Batgirl and Nightwing got there. You two made sure no one else died, and at the end of the day, that’s the goal.”

He squeezed her good shoulder. “I’m sorry it interrupted your date, but I am very proud of you two. You’ve become better heroes than I could have imagined.”

She smiled up at him and felt her cheeks turn red. She leant in and wrapped her arms around Bruce, squeezing him tight. “Thank you, Batman,” she said beneath his arm.

Bruce sighed and wrapped both his arms around Barbara’s back. He lifted his hand into her wet hair and sighed. “Make sure that you and Dick don’t…” He huffed, trying to find the right words. “Make sure you always stay on the same team. Don’t lose sight of each other. Don’t lose sight of what’s important.”

Barbara pulled back just enough to look up at his face, the large bat symbol that she’d sworn allegiance to under her chin. “B, I–”

“Go to bed, Batgirl,” he said, slowly pulling away from her and effectively ending the conversation. He turned and took the steps down back to the computer. “We’ll recheck your shoulder in the morning.”

Barbara decided to leave it. Bruce dealt with things in his own way, and she couldn’t change him any more than she could change the shape of the rivers of Gotham. She was in the elevator doors when she remembered something, and she held the doors open to speak. “Check Dick’s torso. He thinks it’s fractured. I think it’s broken. Please be the deciding vote.”

“Thank you. I’ll check on him,” Bruce called out, not looking up from the screen.

With that, Barbara let the elevator doors shut and leant heavily on the back bar for the ride up to the study. She just wanted to sleep. The night was way too long for her liking, and once she was back in the Manor, she took the stairs two at a time to get up to her room. Alfred stopped her in the hall briefly to tell her there was tea waiting for her on the nightstand, and Barbara thanked him before going down the next corridor.

Barbara had a guest room in the left wing, where Jason and Dick had their rooms. It had been dubbed her room at some point, and she even started leaving clothes there. The room was next to Dick’s and across from Jason’s, and she had to pass by both the boy's rooms to get to hers, but she paused outside of Jason’s when she heard shouting.

“No, that’s not fair!” Jason cried, and Barbara’s breath caught in her throat. She’d never heard Jason sound like that before. Sound so… wrecked.

There was a long pause, and then he was crying. “No, please… You can work it out. Just come home, Selina.”

Barbara’s heart broke as his voice did. He was thirteen and going through that phase where his vocal chords skipped between boy and man, but the sound he was making had nothing to do with that. Only with pure anguish. “Why are you doing this? We all love you. I love you! You told me you’d always be here. You said you weren’t going to go!”

A fresh peel of sobs broke out from his lips from whatever Selina had said, and Barbara heard a _thunk_. She almost opened the door, but Jason started speaking again. “Please don’t go.”

Barbara waited to hear the next part, but it never came. Jason’s sobs were louder, and then something smacked the door, so loud that Barbara jumped back. She pushed it open, scared as to what she might find but the phone was shattered on the ground, and Jason was sitting at the foot of his bed, back against the board with his hands pulling at his hair. He had gone straight upstairs when they got home, not even undressing from his suit and now Barbara knew why.

He was trying to get Selina to come back.

“Jason,” Barbara whispered, and he barely looked up, and kept crying like he couldn’t stop. She closed the door behind her and went over to him and gathered him up into his arms, cape and all. He was so small, wrapping his arms around her middle. He caved into her chest, crying big ugly tears.

“She’s not coming back. She’s left Gotham!” _She left me_ , went unspoken.

Barbara knew that Jason loved Selina. Knew that she was the mother he had craved for growing up, when his was lost in a drug-induced stupor, and then dead on a bathroom floor. He shuddered against her, gasping for breaths and Barbara tightened her grip on him, ignoring the way it jarred her shoulder. “She didn’t leave you. I promise, baby bird, this has nothing to do with you,” she said into his hair.

“We need to get her back,” Jason cried, though he didn’t move.

There was no way any of them were going to bring Selina back if she didn’t want to come. Like Bruce, she had a stubborn streak that didn’t always work in favour of her happiness. But she couldn’t tell Jason that. “We’ll try calling her tomorrow. See if Bruce and Selina have calmed down.”

“They… they were fighting… it was so bad.” He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to stop himself from crying but it was nearing impossible. “It was… it worse than anything I’d see Willis and Catherine do. Worse than anything. I thought they were gonna… I thought they were gonna…” He was choking on his words, horrified at what he’d seen.

Not long after Barbara had met Jason, she’d looked into his past while visiting her father at work. There were many noise complaints made about Jason’s childhood home, and all the police suspected that Willis beat Catherine up and sometimes even Jason when he was drunk or high or both. Selina and Bruce always fought – hand to hand, and back to back, but even Barbara agreed that the night had been something different.

“They’re both okay, Pretty Bird,” Barbara told him. She slipped her hand under his cape to rub his back but felt something wet and sticky where it should have been dry and warm. Quickly, Barbara brought her hand up to her face and in the moonlight, there was something wet and dark on her hands. “Jason, you’re bleeding.” She pushed him away and scrambled to lift his cape. Unlike Dick’s suit, that was a bright red vest, a bright yellow colour beneath underneath his cape, and fluorescent green tights, Jason’s suit was dark. Dark red vest, dark yellow under his cape and a green so dark cladding his legs and arms that it was almost black. It meant that after she pulled his vest up, she could barely see under the suit.

“Okay, come on.” She tugged on him, and he fell into her side. She half dragged, half carried him to the bathroom and sat him on the toilet lid, turning on the lights. She unlatched his cape and unzipped him. “Take off the suit,” she said, and Jason numbly complied, still crying with big choking sobs as she pulled out the first aid kit.

When it was hanging around his waist, Barbara shifted him around and took catalogue of his back. A knife had made it through the seams of his suit, but it wasn’t very deep, and it wasn’t near any major organs.

She took the alcohol from the first aid kit wrapped her arms around Jason’s back, standing between his legs like she’d done with Dick earlier. He pressed his face into her stomach, clinging on as she worked on his wound upside down. “Okay, Jaybird. This is going to sting.”

She poured the alcohol over the wound, and the blood and alcohol splattered pink against the toilet lid and dripped down onto the tiles. He squeezed his fingers into Barbara’s back, and she whispered, “I know, I know. It’s over.” She took some bandages out and wiped the soft flesh clean of blood. Then she bandaged it with a normal bandage and sealed it with a waterproof tape. “Okay.” She pushed him back lightly and took his face in her hands, so he was looking up at her, and gently she cleaned his face of tears with the pads of her thumb. “Have a hot shower, wash your face and brush your teeth. It’ll make you feel better. I’ll put out some clothes on your bed.”

Jason nodded wearily, looking up at her. He wrapped his arms around her middle, making himself as small as possible. “Is she gonna come back?” he whispered.

Barbara shook her head. “I don’t want to lie to you, Jaybird. I think… I think Selina and Bruce need time, and I can’t tell you how much.”

Jason sniffed, more tears slipping down. “Why does everyone leave me?”

Barbara pressed her lips to his forehead and held him there as the sobs started afresh. “I won’t ever leave you, Jason,” Barbara told him. She pulled back and looked him in the way, holding him by his cheeks. “No matter what happens with Bruce, or Dick, or anyone else… I will always be on your side.”

He cried into her top until she leant back towards the shower and turned on the water. When the room steamed up, she lifted Jason to his feet and helped him out of his utility belt and boots, then left him to shower himself.

The night had been so tiring, and all she had wanted all night was to sleep, but Barbara was responsible for Jason. While she was happy fighting back to back with Dick, Jason was her partner every day. Dick came and left as he saw fit, heading his own team with the Titans, and occasionally he patrolled Blüdhaven because the crime there was just as bad as Gotham, but no heroes lived within the city limits. But Jason was hers. Her partner, her Robin. When she had her back against the wall and didn’t think she had anything left in her, he never failed to swoop in and rescue her with a few choice remarks to boost her spirits.

She slowly removed track pants and a red soft hooded jumper from his drawers as well as a wife beater to keep him warm and his boxer shorts so he wouldn’t have to find them, then knocked on the door when she’d given him enough time. “I’ve left you some clothes. I’m just going to get my tea, then I’ll be back.” She went to her room to give him privacy, picking up her warm tea and the still hot pot. She sculled the first warm cup and poured herself a second hot one, then went back to Jason’s room, knocking on the door.

“Come in,” Jason croaked out.

Barbara went in just as Jason was tugging his jumper down over his head. She closed the door behind her softly.

Despite the shower, he still looked a wreck, cheeks flushed and eyes obviously swollen. “Are you staying here?” Jason asked, voice trembling.

“Yep. Get into bed.” She walked around one side, and Jason walked around the other, climbing into the centre of the large king bed, and Barbara put her teapot down on the bedside and propped up some pillows then looked around the bedroom.

Jason had a small bookshelf in his room that was overfilled with all his favourites. She looked through it curiously. “What’s your favourite?” Barbara asked.

Jason didn’t quite understand her at first then looked around the hundreds of hardcovers he had squashed in the shelf. “Um… I don’t have one. But… I’m reading the Odyssey.”

“Again?” Barbara laughed softly, but she didn’t mean to tease him.

She picked up the well-worn book from his desk and slid under the covers with Jason. She sat up on the pillow mountain and pulled him into her good shoulder. He laid on her chest staring at the book pages as she opened them to where the silk ribbon was tucked away. He was at the beginning of the chapter and Barbara held her arm around his back and rested her chin in his short hair, whispering the tale above against over his skin. “Thence we went on to the Aeolian island where lives Aeolus, son of Hippotas, dear to the Immortal Gods…”

Tears still leaked from the corner of Jason’s eyes, but they fell less and less as Barbara read. When she took a sip of her tea, Jason took the cup and sipped some too, before helping her put it on the nightstand. He followed the words on the page as Barbara read, but was exhausted from the night and didn’t last very long at all until his breaths evened out and his heavy eyelids fell shut. She returned the book to the nightstand only when she was sure he was not going to wake up and wiped the remainder of tears from his cheeks.

Barbara moved them down the bed, careful not to wake him and wrapped herself around Jason as best as she could. She was faintly aware that one day he would grow too big for her to encase him like she was and it made her sad to think about. He would always be her baby bird.

Her fingers lightly stroked his cheek, still lacking anything more than a small fluff of hair, though he’d bragged a few nights ago how Bruce had him shaving. He was such a little boy. No matter how much he tried to be a grown adult, he was still going to be the eleven-year-old who practised a trick shot every day for a week so he could make a scrap of paper bounce nearly all the way around the cave before it landed in the trash, to impress her.

At some point, Barbara must have drifted off because one minute she was looking at Jason’s still baby fat face, and the next minute, a thick knuckle was on his cheek, stroking the soft skin. She inhaled sharply and sat up just enough that she wouldn’t wake Jason.

There, standing over them with a sad look in his eye was Bruce. He was staring at Jason, blinking back tears. “Selina called,” he said softly. “Told me to make sure he wasn’t following her.”

Selina.

Barbara couldn’t help but be a little angry at her for caring about Jason the way she did. If she hadn’t planned to be with Bruce forever, she shouldn’t have gotten Jason used to the idea of her constantly being around. Especially knowing how he’d grown up. “Is he okay?” Bruce asked.

“He was stabbed,” Barbara replied. Bruce’s brow furrowed in concern. “Wasn’t too bad. I patched him up in the bathroom. There might be some cleanup.”

Bruce stared at Jason for a moment then leant down and kissed his cheek, squeezing Jason’s hand as he stood back up. It was a moment Barbara was rarely privy to. Bruce being a parent and not just a strict mentor. It reminded her of how much he cared about not just Dick and Jason, but her too.

“Your Dad’s put up the Bat signal,” Bruce whispered. Barbara moved to get out of bed, but he shook his head. “You three need to rest. Dick broke two ribs, your shoulder’s sprained, and Jason is stabbed.” He spoke resolutely, something hardening in his voice and Barbara knew why Bruce ended it with Selina.

The death of the guards, the police officers and the civilians were one thing. Bruce was angry at Selina for her plan to get Harley away from Joker failing, but the loss of life was sometimes unavoidable.

“All plans go wrong, Barbara,” Bruce told her when they were amid training. She held her bō close to her body and blocked his attacks. “It’s how you adapt when they go wrong, that’s what counts.”

Selina hadn’t adapted the way Bruce wanted her to. Rather than turning Harley in, Selina helped her escape and delayed Bruce from getting to his kids. She said she had her reasons, but wouldn’t tell Bruce any of them and no doubt, he’d heard Batgirl and Nightwing on the comms, panicking and in pain as they fought off the worst of Blackgate.

The problem was, her plan didn’t just get innocent people killed.

Her plan got Bruce Wayne’s kids hurt, and that was unacceptable. “I’d send Dick in, but he’s on a lot of painkillers right now. Can you take care of him tonight? I don’t think he’s going to handle any of this well.” Bruce ran his knuckled over Jason’s cheek.

“I’ll always take care of him,” Barbara promised.

Bruce smiled softly and lifted the covers around them both. “Go to sleep.”

He turned off the bedside light, and Barbara could see the bat signal out the window against the sky, shining bright and calling him away. Bruce took one last look at them from the doorway, sighing and shut the door behind him and Barbara settled with Jason in her arms.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Barbara and Jason. Not shipped together, just as best friends.
> 
> I'd kill for a Batgirl & Red Hood comic series.
> 
> Also, I'm a shitty artist who often colours outside the lines and cbb fixing it up. I can draw very basic things and Barbara's face is traced from a drawing I have on my diary... I don't know where I got it from, just that the original pic was of a crying mermaid and that I hate drawing men's hair.


	4. Lois

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lois was an interloper in their lives. The fun-aunt through marriage who got to muck around and roll her eyes at their antics. But she does care. More than they probably know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So parts of this chapter is something I wrote years ago, and I was looking for something else on my hard drive and found it. Then I thought, 'it actually fits in with the Mothers story' and also, it has heaps of awesome Dick & Jason moments which I wanted because, I really wanted to show what kind of relationship they have in the universe...
> 
> I've also posted this chapter and the next chapter together because I feel bad for making you all wait, even though you've all said you're happy to do so.
> 
> Anyway, here is Lois:

Clark was being ridiculous.

Alfred opened the door of the limo that Bruce hired to pick her up from the airport and stepped beneath the umbrella he held out for her and Jonathan to stand beneath. “Alfred, you don’t have to,” she said.

“I’m aware, Mrs Lane, but I just supposed you may wish to keep yourself and the young master Jonathan, dry.”

Lois glared only a little at Alfred. He was overly sarcastic for a butler, and she had always thought the English were supposed to be polite. “Thank you, Alfred. And  _please_  call me Lois.”

“Of course, Mrs Lane,” Alfred replied with no hint of a smile and opened the front door for her as the driver carried in her bags.

A week ago, Clark had run into a new meta, Parasite. Infected with an alien entity, he gained an insatiable hunger that was only cured by absorbing the energy, and subsequent gifts, of other people, weakening them in the process.

Their fight had shot them into Central City somehow, and Lois watched a heavily pregnant Iris West doing a live report. “They’re in midtown now, and residents and workers are being told not to evacuate, but to get into their basements if they’re available, as most of the fighting has been occurring up in the air.”

Lois had taken a few days off to be with Jonathan who was teething and grumpy enough that he couldn’t be left at the day-care, where someone might question how he was throwing his rattle with enough force that it embedded itself in the wall, and phoned Bruce. “Lois,” he said with ease. “If this is about Clark, I’m already watching the news.”

“He doesn’t look good,” Lois said, watching her husband barely able to keep himself up. Meanwhile, the Parasite only seemed to be getting stronger. At the time they hadn’t known what the purple man’s powers were, or how to stop him.

“I’ve already called Barry, and I’m on my way. It’s okay, Lois. He’ll be fine.”

He was.

After two days of recovering, Bruce and Barry managed to scare Parasite away but not before they figured out he was taking more than just powers.

As he touched Clark, he also absorbed his memories. 

Not all of them. Just the important ones and just enough to figure out that he was, in fact, Clark Kent and she was Lois Lane and that together, they had a son. When Clark found out, he went into a state of panic and wanted to leave Lois and Jonathan at the Fortress of Solitude, but she’d outright refused, and they began to argue in their loudest voices in the middle of the Watchtower.

It wasn’t pleasant. Flash ducked out of the room, but Batman braved both of their wraths to step in between them. “From what we can tell, Parasite didn’t garner anything about my identity,” he said, still wearing the cowl. He wouldn’t take it off in the Watchtower, as he had only entrusted his identity with a few of the League’s heroes. “So Lois and Jonathan can stay with me.”

Which was what led to her being escorted into a guest room at Wayne Manor by a very sarcastic butler with her teething half-alien child tucked into her arms. Lois only agreed because it wasn’t the stupid Fortress of Solitude where the temperatures were fine for a Kryptonian but terrible for a human who preferred summer, and she knew if Clark had to kidnap them to keep her and Jonathan safe, he would. “Thank you, Alfred,” she said. “I’m sorry for imposing.”

“It’s no imposition, Mrs Lane. Master Jason has been most excited about your arrival. Actually, he may still be in your room.” Alfred frowned as if remembering, and stepped ahead of Lois to open the door.

Sure enough, fourteen-year-old Jason was sitting in the midst of boxes and papers and holding a spanner and pieces to the half-complete crib. He hadn’t noticed them yet and grabbed the closet paper with the instructions written on them and glared at it. “Put screw C into joint D-F! Okay, I fucking did that, so why won’t this bullshit piece of Swedish shit screw together?”

“A _hem_ ,” Alfred said, clearing his throat and Jason’s head shot up from the instructions and his whole face burnt right red as he realised he’d been overheard. Lois was trying hard not to laugh at the fourteen-year-old with a pencil behind his ear and his pockets overfilled with screws and spanners, being caught cursing like a sailor.

“Hi, Alfred, Aunt Lois,” Jason stuttered, clearing his throat and looking around at the mess he created. “I’m going to fix this,” he said slowly. “Just go hang out downstairs.”

“Master Jason, Master Dick will be here soon, and he does have a certain knack for these sort of things…”

“It’s almost done!” Jason argued. He pointed around the room. “This is just… mess. A lot of mess, but I got it, okay!”

Lois chuckled to herself and walked up to Jason, leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. “It’s okay, Alfred. He’s done a better job than Clark did. I had to call someone from the store to get the thing halfway to this point.”

Jonathan had woken up from his nap and looked around wearily, but spotted Jason and beamed. “Jay!” he called out, and Jason’s face broke into a wide grin. Lois knew that Jonathan loved both the Batboys. “Fly! Fly!” Lois was surprised Jonathan remembered that Jason and Dick had entertained him last time they babysat him with Barbara, by twirling around in Dick’s gymnasium.

He leant forward and rubbed Jonathan’s cheek with his knuckle.

“Heya, Jona-  _ow!_ ”

Jonathan had grabbed hold of a clump of Jason’s hair and pulled, and Jason’s head went with the yank. “Jonathan, no pulling,” Lois scolded him and quickly reached out and quickly rubbed Jason’s head. “Sorry, Jason. He’s obsessed with hair lately.”

“I will keep that in mind,” he said in a clipped tone, glaring at Jonathan.

Lois laughed. “Thank you for doing the crib. You didn’t have to. I brought the collapsible one.”

Jason forced a smile on his face. “I figured you would, but Bruce said he hates that thing and he wants it out of his house.”

“Master Jason,” Alfred scolded.

“Or he just hates me and forced me to build this to watch me suffer. Either way, it’s almost done, I swear.” Jason made a face at Jonathan right at the end which got him giggling and clapping his hands.

“Well then, Mrs Lane, if you would like to come downstairs for tea, we can leave your things here and let Master Jason attend to the crib.”

Lois pouted, feeling sorry for Jason but agreed anyway. She gave him a side hug and realised how big he’d gotten in the last year and told him as much. “Thanks,” he chuckled, and he squeezed at Jonathan’s thigh before they left.

Wayne Manor was as grand as it was old, and Lois was surprised how none of its residents seemed to get lost. She was escorted to a sitting room she was sure she’d never been in before and sat down while Alfred turned on the television for her and went to make tea. Lois stood Jonathan up on her lap and looked at him. “You know, your Daddy has put us in the crazy house, right? We’re living with Bats.”

“Bat! Bat! Bat!” Jonathan giggled, waving his arms around. Lois grinned, knowing Bruce would get a kick out of that. She’d have to make sure he did it again when he was there.

The double doors into the sitting room opened, and she expected to see Jason, but Dick Grayson stuck his head through the door, and a wide grin broke out over his face when he spotted her. “Hey Lois,” he beamed, taking off his sunglasses.

Lois stood up, bringing Jonathan to his hips. “Good God, Dick, Bruce must be beating the ladies down with a stick.”

“It’d be a bit hypocritical of him if he were,” he chuckled, hugging her with one arm as she got close. He was a good head taller than her already, and he was only sixteen, and with his toned athletic figure, he could pass for even older.

“I heard about you and Barbara,” Lois said sympathetically. Dick barely flinched, but that was all the training from Bruce drilled into him from a young age. “I’m sorry, kid. But you know Clark, and I broke up like… six times before we got married.”

“It was about a month ago… she’s dating  _Luke_  now. We’re still friends though,” he said, though his voice sounded strained. “How’s tiny Supes?” Dick asked, making a face much like Jason had at Jonathan.

“Deh, deh, deh!” Jonathan garbled, reaching out to Dick. He hadn’t quite gotten the ‘k’ sounds down pat yet, but Dick didn’t mind. Dick popped down his bag, and Lois let him take him, as he proceeded to hold an adult conversation and make googly faces at his son.

Lois rolled her eyes and fixed one of Jonathan’s socks. “Teething is oh-so-fun when you have a super-powered child.”

“Yeah, I’m waiting for Aunt Iris to have to change two speedster’s diapers. Actually, I’m waiting for Wally to babysit them. Donna and I have a bet that those kids are gonna be faster than him by the time they’re three.”

Lois was not envious of Iris or her twins. “That poor woman.”

Dick growled at Jonathan and laughed when Jonathan growled back at him. “I love kids. They’re like tiny drunk adults. It’s awesome.”

“Uhuh. Try living with a tiny drunk adult.” But Lois kissed her baby on the cheek anyway because he was her everything. Up until the moment she found out she was pregnant with Jonathan, Lois had thought she would sacrifice everything in the universe to keep Clark alive and safe.

But as soon as she accepted that she was pregnant, and that the results were positive, and that she would be carrying alien life in her stomach for nine months, Lois realised she would throw Clark into a volcano on a planet with a red sun before she let anything happen to her baby boy. When she told Clark as much, heavily hormonal at the time, he’d laughed at her and kissed her cheek, saying he wouldn’t have it any other way.

The door to the room opened, and Jason came him, dragging a box along the floor and holding large mounds of rubbish in both arms. “Hey Dickie, give me a hand?”

“I have my hands very full right now, Jaybird,” Dick said, swinging Jonathan up to his hip. “You’re gonna have to do it yourself.”

Jason glared at Dick and looked like he was about to swear, but eyed Jonathan and thought better of it. “He likes me better,” he muttered, before disappearing through the second doors to the kitchen.

Lois rolled her eyes at Dick. “You should be nicer to him.”

“I’m very nice to him. I drove him and his little friends to the movies and picked them up the other night.” Dick pretended to bite Jonathan’s arm, and he giggled.

“No bite! No! No! No!”

Lois kissed Jonathan’s cheek, unable to stop herself. His hair was brown like hers, but it was darkening more and more every day to Clark's colours. He was getting bigger too, and she was afraid of the day he would be too big for her to look after. “Is Bruce with Clark?” Dick asked, his tone serious, though he was trying to kiss Jonathan’s cheek.

“I don’t know, are you talking to Bruce? I mean, I need to know if I should be giving you this information.”

“This week,” Dick shrugged. “Until I go upstairs and find the collection of college pamphlets he’s left on my desk.”

“What’s wrong with college? I went to college.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “I barely go to school. I only go to keep an eye on Jason. Little weirdo gets into fights to keep bullies off the other kids, but will sit there and let them throw sandwiches at the back of his head.”

Lois winced. “They’re still doing that?”

“Not when I’m there, which is the only reason I’m not getting my GED now and blowing the joint. I have a two-year holiday planned, and then when I turn eighteen, I’m joining the Blüdhaven Police.”

Dick had spent enough time staying in their guest room over the years to know that being a police officer was all he wanted. He wanted to stop crime by day and by night, and the more Bruce tried to tell him that he should join any other career, the more determined he became to be a police officer. “I think you could make a lot better improvements as a lawyer than as a police officer,” she said. When Dick opened his mouth, she held up her hand to stop him. “It’s your life, obviously, so who am I to object? Just the woman who is going to be sans husband when he has to go out and stop your father from putting away every bad guy in Blüdhaven before they can get to you.”

Dick rolled his eyes as Jason came back in, sweating. “ _Why_  are our bins so far away?!”

Lois laughed. “The crib is done?”

“The crib is done,” Jason confirmed.

“Thank you, Jason.” Lois pulled him in for a hug and gave him a fat wet kiss that she knew annoyed him to no end. He wiped it off quickly when he pulled away, making a face. “You are my hero.”

“Yeah, well I have also been told to tell you to please treat this like your own home and Clark, Barry and Bruce will have this all sorted out soon.” Jason recited from Bruce’s extensive lecture, and Dick rolled his eyes.

“There was so much warmth and hospitality in that statement, Jaybird. You almost sounded like Bruce.”

“Well I owe the Wayne’s,” Lois said. “If I weren’t here, I’d be stuck in the Fortress of Solitude for a week reading Kryptonian literature for the hundredth time.”

“You were going to be in the Fortress for a week?” Dick gaped.

“There are Kryptonian books? How many? Are they translated, or do you know Kryptonian?” Jason asked, in an equal amount of awe as his brother.

Lois rolled her eyes because of course, they would think living in an ice castle was a dream come true.

Alfred came out with tea and insisted Dick take his bags upstairs. He gave Jonathan over to Jason who was more than keen to hang out with him, and when Dick came back, he brought down a fistful of college pamphlets. “Told you.” He threw them at Jason, who was sat in an armchair, and the younger ducked his head and held Jonathan against his chest protectively.

“I’m holding a child,” Jason snapped.

Dick flinched, throwing himself into the armchair across from Jason. “Sorry. But I’m sick of B trying to force college on me.”

“You’re an idiot for not listening to him.”

“Oh, because you listen to B oh-so-much.”

“About school I do.”

“Doesn’t he tell you to socialise more and stop hanging out by yourself or with my friends and me?”

“About  _education_  I do,” Jason corrected, making faces at Jonathan again as he made bubbles from his spit. “I’m going to go to Gotham U when I graduate and study something that’s actually gonna help people, and not join the second most corrupt police force after Gotham PD.”

Lois watched the boys descend into a familiar argument. As much as she loved Jonathan, she was glad her and Clark had decided only to have one child. With Conner, Mon-El and Kara and arriving in Clark’s life in the last four years, and her sister Lucy still being a teenager and always in dire need to rebel, Lois already had enough sibling rivalry to deal with, and she was glad most of it took place outside of their house.

She didn’t notice when the conversation turned from arguing back to Jonathan as both boys stared at the baby curiously.

“Hey, Lois? Is he like Conner? I mean, I wouldn’t try this with Jon, but Conner free fell off the top of a building just to see what would happen, and other than a giant dent in the ground but he didn’t feel a thing.” Dick was staring at Lois, wide-eyed and curious but she glared back at him.

“I don’t know, and if I ever find out you and Conner tried to drop my son off a building, I will kill you both.”

Dick shrunk back lower in his chair. “Just curious.”

Jason was snickering, and cooing at Jonathan. “Dickiebird is in trouble with your Mama. Can you say asshole?”

“Don’t teach my son how to say asshole, Jason.”

“You let Richard over here teach him how to say Dick,” Jason pointed out.

Dick snapped back at Jason and Jason rolled his eyes and had an equally as good come back. Lois just slipped down the couch, watching the two brothers bicker.

It was going to be a long weekend.

* * *

After Jonathan had been put to sleep and Lois, Dick and Jason had dinner together, Dick said he was going to meet up with some friends and Jason took Lois to see his room.

There were four wings to Wayne Manor. The north wing, where formalities occurred, the east wing where Bruce slept, the south wing where guests stayed and the west wing where Dick and Jason had their bedrooms. Jason told Lois that Bruce had gotten him the greatest birthday present ever and made her follow him.

“Everyone asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I just kept saying books… So Bruce bought me all the books,” Jason laughed a little breathlessly like he was still delirious over it and opened the door to his room with a wide grin.

Lois gaped.

She stepped in slowly and looked up and down the tall ceilings, with three walls all shelved from floor to ceiling and filled with exactly what Jason said.  _All the books_.

Lois went to one shelf, and there were books from the Bronte Sisters to Edgar Allen Poe, to Sophocles and Aristotle… If a book had been written, Jason probably had a copy of it, and she couldn’t help but be impressed. “Have you read them all?” she asked, noting there was only one gap where there was a bust of Shakespeare.

Jason shook his head, eyeing all the books around the room. “I’ve read a lot, but not all of them. I will read them all someday, but I also keep buying more books… Dick says I have a problem, but Dick is also a dick.”

“You two are really horrible to each other sometimes,” Lois said, walking over to a shelf.

“Sometimes,” Jason agreed. “But he just wants to become a cop because it’s the one thing Babs doesn’t want him doing and he’s trying to piss her off. It’s a bonus that it also pisses off Bruce. I don’t know why they’re always at each other’s throats, but I wish they would stop. I have to tiptoe on eggshells to see if they’re getting along this week.”

That was something she wasn’t looking forward to. Jonathan’s rebellious years. The times when he fought with her and Clark just to fight, and be his own man. She spotted The Iliad and pulled it out. “What about this one? You read this one?”

“Three times,” he said, and Lois stared at him in surprise. She hadn’t thought he would be interested in the old dusty legends, but he was staring at the book with some reverence. “Actually, I’ve probably read all the books in the Epic Cycle three or four times each. Odyssey is my favourite. My mom and I watched the Odyssey mini-series together a couple of times together when I was a kid so I could talk about it with her.” He spoke so gently that Lois for a minute forgot he was fourteen.

He looked like a man, who had seen many a terrible thing but still had hope buried inside. At that moment, he reminded her of Clark. “I’ve never heard you talk about your mother before,” Lois said. “Or your father, for that matter.”

Jason blushed, ducking his head down and returning to the little boy that he was. “Not much to say. She’s dead.”

The reporter in Lois switched on as she realised exactly what he said. “And your father?”

“He’s dead too. Probably.” He turned into the bookshelf, staring at the books, fingering the shelf and Lois realised she’d upset him.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked,” she said, wanting to see him smile again. He had looked so awestruck when he was looking at all the books, even though he had slept in that room every night since he’d gotten them. It was adorable, and she was genuinely upset she’d broken that.

But Jason’s jaw twitched like he wanted to say something. “When Bruce adopted me, he had to get my dad’s death confirmed so the state could make sure no one would try and contest my adoption. Gotham State Penitentiary had told us – my mom and me – my Dad got knifed in a fight in the yard, but Bruce couldn’t find any death certificate. It’s not unusual for GSP to screw up paperwork but… it’s also not unusual for a con to fake his death so he can get away from his debts. Bruce assured me he’s dead. Found his grave and proved it in court with all this evidence… I mean, the old man wasn’t good enough to fool Batman, but… Batman would try and fool Robin so that he wouldn’t be afraid of being forced to live in Crime Alley.” He touched one of the books on the shelf and looked over his shoulder at Lois sadly.

“But Mom is very dead. I was there. Or wasn’t… I went out when I shouldn’t have. Wanted to see the Die Hard marathon and snuck into the movies with one of my friends. I knew mom would be shooting up, but I left her alone. When I got back, she was already dead. I tried to wake her up… called the ambulance and everything but she never woke up.” Jason poked the spine of one of the books and made a face at it as if it had offended him.

Bruce had only ever told Lois and Clark that Jason’s mother passed away when he was nine, and Lois had vague ideas that his parents weren’t the greatest in the world, but she had, had no idea of the extent of it. “I’m so sorry, Jason.” She wanted to touch him. To pull him up to her arms like she did with Jonathan when he woke up crying out for her.

But she wasn’t like that with him. She could muck around with him and take him out when he was in Metropolis, but she’d always been the fun Aunt. More accurately, the fun aunt through marriage that didn’t get heavily involved in the drama. “You know, I haven’t sat down and read a good book in forever,” Lois said gently. “But baby brain makes it hard to concentrate. Do you think you could read something to me, Jaybird?” she asked, using the nickname she’d heard only a few others use before.

Jason’s lips twitched into a wry smile, and he reached out and picked up Gulliver’s Travels. “I’ve just started this, but I don’t mind rereading the first chapter.”

Lois nodded, sitting in the closest armchair, and putting up her feet on the ottoman in front of her. “I am all ears, pretty bird.”

Jason smiled at her and sat down in the armchair that was far too big for him and dragged her feet up. “Chapter one,” he began in a slow even voice. “A voyage to Lilliput…”

* * *

A rough shake woke Lois up, and she sat up in bed, yanking the covers around her when she spotted Jason leaning over her, a white sheen on his face. “Jason?” she said, bewildered. On instinct, Lois looked at the baby monitor then up at Jason’s panicked face. “What’s going on?”

“Just got a call from the Watchtower… Something happened. I don’t know. Someone’s hurt, bad. Come on!” He grabbed Lois and dragged her out of bed, and she went with the motion, stepping out in her pyjamas.

A few logical things ran through Lois’s mind. She knew that Barry, Bruce, and Clark had all gone to deal with Parasite, but the chances that it was Clark who was hurt weren’t likely. It flushed her with relief and guilt to think about, but then she realised what Jason looked so panicked. He must have figured out the same thing which meant it was either Bruce or Barry, but the dark foreboding feeling in her stomach told her it most likely wasn’t Barry. “Okay, okay… Let me get dressed.”

“There are clothes on the plane!”

“Jason, let me get dressed,” she said more firmly.

Jason grunted in frustration, but let her go. He was halfway out of the room before he turned around and said. “Dick called Conner. He’s coming to look after Jonathan, so hurry up!”

Lois nodded, making a non-committal grunt and when the door was shut, she hurried pulled on her jeans, a bra and a shirt, then took her phone dialling Iris’s number. It only took a minute to connect. “Barry?” a tired voice came through the phone. Lois tensed up. Iris was asleep.

“It’s Lois,” she said after a beat of silence.

Iris’s voice became urgent. “What’s going on? Is it Barry?”

“Don’t worry. Someone got hurt. I don’t know who, but if no one’s called you, it’s not Barry.”

“Bruce?”

Lois didn’t say anything, looking over her shoulder at the door. “Don’t worry. I’m with the Batboys. I’ll find out what’s going on.”

“I’ll call Wally… See if he can bring me. I’ll be there soon.”

“Iris, you’re seven months pregnant with twins. You’re not going to go space travelling now. I’ll call you when I get to the Watchtower.”

Iris, fully awake, came to her sense. “Okay… okay, I’ll stay here. But call me.”

“I will.”

Lois hung up and went out into the hall, spotting Conner closing Jonathan’s door. “You got here quick.”

“I was only in Blüdhaven,” he replied. “I was actually looking for Dick but, he found me I guess.”

Lois nodded. “Stay here with Jon? I’m going to look after the boys.”

Conner flinched. “So it’s Bruce?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

She kissed his cheek, and went down the hall, panic forcing her to remember her way back downstairs. Jason was standing at the front entrance, waiting for her with an impatient bounce in his step. “Come  _on_!”

“I’m coming,” she said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Let’s go.”

Jason led her through the Manor again and to a study, where the fireplace was missing and replaced by an elevator. She went in with him, and Jason tapped his foot impatiently as they went into the basement. “It’s going to be okay, Jason,” Lois said quietly. His head snapped to her as if he’d momentarily forgotten her presence. “No matter what we find, it’ll be okay.”

He strummed his fingers on his jeans and nodded. “Yeah. I know,” he said trying to sound calm, but as soon as the doors opened, he all but ran into the cave.

Lois had never been into the Batcave before, but she’d heard about it from Clark. “It’s just a cave,” he said with a shrug when she asked him to describe it. “With computers and cars and a locker room with  _everyone’s_  gear in it. Seriously. I ended up there once, and I told him I was going back to my place to change before we went out to get something to eat. He just frowned at me and showed me to my locker. He’s so weird.”

Lois had laughed. “I don’t think he’s had friends before.”

“His gym is in a cave! Where was he ever going to find friends like that?”

His gym was in the cave.

As well as his cars, and his medic bay and a large desk that could fit dozens of people, but was most likely usually left empty. She looked around the cavern, and all of a sudden felt bad for not inviting Bruce over more. Out of all the heroes, he was the one Superman got along with the best and trusted the most, and he spent most of his nights in a giant cave all by himself.

She had paused outside the elevator as Jason had run ahead to Dick and Alfred, stocking up the Javelin-7. Dick was already in his black tights, a bluebird emblazoned across his chest. 

Nightwing.

He’d fashioned himself after a God from Krypton because he’d been trying to piss off Bruce by showing how much he preferred Clark. Clark had been honoured by the whole thing and, for the first few months of Nightwing’s solo missions, followed him to make sure he was okay. He would come back home and recount everything Dick did in detail like he was telling an epic adventure, and it was about then that Lois decided she wanted a baby with him.

“Get dressed,” Dick ordered as Jason got near. “We’re going to the Watchtower, not to a hospital and not everyone there knows who we are.”

“Let me help. I can get ready on the ride.”

“Go get ready now,” Dick snapped. “Bruce left me in charge. That’s an order.”

“You’re not the boss of me! It’ll be quicker if I help.”

“Jason, don’t test me right now. Go. Get. Dressed.”

“Come on, young Master Jason,” Alfred said, stepping away from packing the jet. “You also must show Mrs Lane where her things are. Mr Kent’s identity is also a secret from some of the League, and Master Bruce promised to keep it that way.”

Jason’s jaw twitched, and he growled, “Fine.” He turned on his heel and walked back towards Lois. She met him halfway, but he grabbed her arm and dragged her back from where they came towards the infamous lockers.

It half reminded her of a high school gym, only cleaner. The whole place was tiled blue, and every inch of it was lined with lockers. Jason looked at a sheet on the wall and found Lois’ name written there. “34B. Above Clark’s,” Jason muttered, pointing it out. “B keeps it stocked in case something ever goes wrong. There should be a face scrambler in there, and there’s no combination. We don’t exactly live in a den of thieves.”

Lois opened the locker door as Jason took his things out and stormed into a change room. There were grey slacks and a blazer in her size, as well as a shirt and kitten heels. She touched the expensive material softly and wondered what Bruce had planned for her to do in such a disguise. She recognised the pair of glasses on the top shelf. She’d worn face scramblers before, but these ones were designed to look like Clark’s civilian glasses except the logo on the side, wasn’t just a logo, but a button in the shape of a bat.

 _Funny,_  she thought, but she slid the glasses on and pressed the button, then looked at herself in the mirror.

She blinked and felt nauseous as she tried to pick out details of her own face. The face scrambler did something to features where she couldn’t concentrate on them. She’d seen her own face for her entire life, and Lois couldn’t tell if her eyes were blue, or green, or brown or purple. It was always little distressing to see, and she hoped that Jonathan would never see her with it on.

Jason stepped out of the change room, pulling on his gloves and with no boots or a mask. He was staring at his hands intently, stretching out the leather and flexing his hands, but underneath his frustration, she could see he was terrified. “Hey.” Lois pressed the button on the side of the glasses and deactivated the scrambler, resting her hand on Jason’s shoulder to get him to look up at her. He did, his bottom jaw jutting out defiantly. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

“They never call us up to the Watchtower,” Jason murmured. “I’ve only been there twice, and once was because someone had bugged the Manor phones and he wanted me out of the house until it was sorted. This has never happened before.”

“Let’s just go up and find out what happened before we panic, okay?” She lifted her hand up and pressed it against his cheek. “Let’s go and help Dick.”

But when they went out, Dick and Alfred had already managed to fuel the spaceship and tested its functions. “Okay. Now we can go,” Dick said, sounding a little more relieved. “Get inside.”

Jason didn’t need telling twice, collecting his socks and boots from where he’d left them next to the computers and running through the hanger. Lois went and found herself next to Alfred. “Mrs Lane, a moment,” Alfred said, only once Jason was on the Javelin-7. Dick was staring stonily at the spaceship, fists balled into his sides. He wasn’t looking at them, but Lois could tell he was listening. “Master Bruce has been kidnapped,” he said. “The Parasite caused a cave in just outside his bunker, and while Superman and Flash ended up on the exit side, Batman was stuck with The Parasite. From what Superman could see, he ended up unconscious, and Parasite took him. With The Parasite able to use Master Bruce’s memories against us, we have enacted a plan we had long ago to keep the children safe. Mr Kent has requested you join the boys at the Watchtower, but I will take the Younger Masters, Conner and Jon, with me when I go to retrieve Barbara from her father’s home.”

“Why are the boys coming to the Watchtower?” Lois asked, eyeing Dick warily. He had his fists balled up in his sides, and Alfred sighed.

“Because Master Jason will no doubt try going after Bruce. Keeping him in space seems much easier than trying to calm him where he has access to motorbikes and other vehicles. Also, Master Richard and I are the only ones who can authorise access to Bruce’s tracking device on the League’s system. As I need to go collect Barbara…”

“Okay. Got it.” Lois walked over to Dick and rested her hand on his back. “It’s going to be okay. It’s Bruce.”

Dick nodded, eyes flickering between the jet and the computers. He had his mask in his hands, and he was playing with it. “Yeah. I know. Let’s just do this.”

On the plane, Jason was already strapped in and impatiently waiting for them with a nervous tapping foot. The ship was large, with a pilots seat in the front and many passenger seats spread out down the sides. “You know, Clark could be dying, and your delaying is wasting the last moments he could be spending with his wife,” Jason bit at Dick, in the far-right seat. Lois’s stomach flipped at the venom in his voice, but underneath it all, all she heard was the pain.

Dick sat in the pilot’s seat, already flicking on a bunch of commands. “Don’t say things like that,” he said. “And apologise to Lois.”

It looked like, for a minute, Jason wouldn’t apologise to anyone, but he slammed his jaw shut and looked over at Lois. “Sorry,” he said sincerely. “But we’re taking too damn long!” He turned back to Dick, and the elder just rolled his eyes and began the engines. Lois sat in her chair on the far left just as he looked at her. 

“Buckle up,” he said earnestly.

She reached up behind her back and pulled the cross strap over her chest and from underneath her. It reminded her of the child seats that she strapped Jon into. She couldn’t speak, thinking about Bruce.

It was obvious, despite their arguing and the orders they received from him daily, that Bruce meant everything to these boys. Dick looked lost, though he was focusing himself by trying to perfect the task at hand, and Jason didn’t even know what was going on and he was stressed at all the possibilities. It unnerved her to think about Jonathan and herself going through a similar worry over Clark one day. She didn’t want to think about it.

“Taking off,” Dick said, and the spaceship roared to life. 

Lois had been to the Watchtower a few times. Sometimes because Clark was hurt, but sometimes because Clark liked to watch her looking out at space. Bruce had given Clark his own spaceship to take her up in, but it was an older model than the Javelin-7. 

Outside the window, the cave turned into Gotham, and then the night sky. “Punching in the coordinates,” he muttered. He did so and then picked up his mask that he’d rested on the console. “Mask on, Robin,” Dick ordered.

Jason did as he was told and Dick looked over his shoulder at Lois. “You too, Agent L.”

“Agent L?” Jason scoffed. “Seriously?”

“Codenames only,” Dick said ignoring him, placing his own mask on his face. Lois touched the button on the side of her glasses, and though she felt no different, Dick nodded approvingly. “Let’s go.” He pressed a button and Lois lurched back in her seat as they took off vertically into the sky. She grabbed onto the armrests as her head was forced back into the cushioning and it briefly crossed her mind how impossible it would have been for Jason to change on the ship at the rate they were moving at.

They hit the atmosphere and rocketed through it, and she squinted at the blinding flash of fire but felt no warmer. Bruce had decked out the whole plane, so she shouldn’t have been surprised. “Gravity force field, powering up,” Dick said, flicking some switches just as Lois noticed her body felt lighter. “Charged. Deployed.”

Then all at once, her chest felt its normal weight again as if it had never happened. They ship didn’t move, and though she was aware they were still flying vertically away from the earth, she could feel gravity below her feet. “There it is,” Dick said, and Lois never grew tired of seeing it.

She knew that no one in the UN knew about the Watchtower, but it surprised her that the League had been able to keep the headquarters a secret. It was taller than any building in Metropolis, and had two wings that shot out from the top and almost formed a circle, but didn’t quite meet. “Robin, open the doors to the tower,” Dick said.

Jason perked up, surprised by Dick’s instruction then pulled over a console from the armrest to his lap and became typing something in. Dick flew the jet in gently, but the landing itself jolted. He flinched. “Sorry. Still not the best at that.” And with that, he depowered the plane and got out of his seatbelt.

“That was fast,” Lois said, also getting out of her seat.

“Bruce built it to beat Clark here,” Jason said.

 _Of course, he did_ , she wanted to say, but the words froze in her throat as she thought of Bruce. He was missing, and she could see the tension already in Dick’s face as he walked over to Jason and guided him out of the Javelin-7 with a hand on his shoulder. They had to wait for the Bay to fill with oxygen again, but once it did she followed them outside. 

They stepped foot on the landing dock, and the doors from the inside opened. Clark stepped inside, causing Jason to almost lose his step as his brain ruled out one of three possibilities for their meeting.

“Boys, Agent L,” Clark said as they approached, and he reached out his hand to Lois, and she moved to him, hugging him tightly. Although she wanted to be there for the boys, she was highly aware it could have been Clark that was missing. “Come on. Everyone is in meeting room, ready to report.”

“Batman?” Robin asked.

“Let’s just go and find out, okay?” Nightwing murmured, squeezing Jason’s shoulder. Lois realised that the heroes were about to tell Robin exactly what happened. Because Alfred couldn’t control him, and Dick was too young to break it to him. Lois knew that if anything truly terrible were to happen to Bruce and if Alfred wasn’t around, Clark and herself were listed as Dick and Jason’s legal guardians until Dick was old enough to take care of Jason on his own.

It had been something Clark mentioned to her after they got married. Dick had been ten at the time, and he said how he’d promised Bruce that he would take the young acrobat if it came to the worst. When Jason was adopted, Bruce asked her about it when he’d fixed his will. At the time, Lois hadn’t seen either Bruce or Clark injured more than once or twice superficially and it was impossible to think of them as anything other than immortal.

She hadn’t been that naive in a long while.

Knowing very well that one day she could be in charge of his life, Lois let go of Clark and went to Jason. She slipped her hand inside his, and he looked up at her, confused. She couldn’t see his eyes through the blinders on his mask and Lois wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but he stuck his chin up and led the way to the meeting room, hand squeezing Lois’ tight.

Everyone was waiting for them.

The founding members of the League minus Flash – Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter – were sat at the head of the table, where Superman walked to. The seat without Flash wasn’t nearly as obvious as the seat where Batman should have been. Green Arrow and Black Canary were there too, sitting near where the end of the table near the boys. Lois knew Dinah was close to the Batfamily, though Bruce didn’t get along too well with Oliver, he liked Dick because of Roy.

There were other heroes there. Most of the League were there, some sitting at the table, others gathered around the walls. Jason let go of her hand in the face of them all, but he stayed close by her. His face was staring stonily forward, but she couldn’t see his eyes, and she imagined them dancing around the room at all the faces.

“Robin, Nightwing,” Superman began. “Welcome.”

Lois shivered at Clark’s command of the room. It was so… cold. Detached.  _Clark, don’t do this,_ she thought.

“Where’s Batman?” Jason asked, his voice wavering but still loud and firm. He didn’t care about the formalities. He didn’t care about anything but the truth that was slowly dawning on him.

Superman sighed and looked around the room.  _No Clark. Not in front of everyone._

“Batman was taken by Parasite,” Superman said. Jason’s jaw tightened in his head enough that the vein in his forehead bulged. “Flash was injured, and we were retreating from Parasite’s cave when Parasite used the strength he’d stolen from me to cause a cave-in. Batman sacrificed himself so Flash, and I could escape, but… But he didn’t make it.”

“What?” Nightwing exclaimed. Dick hadn’t known. Alfred most likely didn’t know either, because Lois doubted he would have let the boys come alone.

“No!” Jason shouted. “What do you mean?”

“I surveyed the sight once we were back above ground. What I saw was Batman trapped beneath the rubble but… But his heart wasn’t beating. Parasite hauled him out from under the rocks but… I’m sorry boys. He didn’t make it.” Clark was genuinely upset, and the League all had their heads cast down and were staring at the table in shock.

Most of the League didn’t seem to know how to react, some whispering and peering around as if Batman would appear from the shadows and tell Superman to stop being an idiot. Lois wanted to hit her big dumb husband.  _Why did you tell them in front of everyone?_

Jason and Dick were both gaping, and Dick looked like he was barely able to breathe. “Now Batman designed all the security for the Watchtower, and he knew many of our identities. But now his memories, his fighting talent and his planning skills, are in the hands of the enemy and we need to all be vigilant and make sure nothing like this happens again.

“Our priority is to keep our information out of Parasite’s hand and keep Batman’s family safe. Boys I know this is hard for you but with Batman gone, and your identities compromised, you’ll be staying with a League member who–”

 “You didn’t tell me that!” Nightwing hissed, interrupting him. “You told me he was missing! You didn’t tell me he was… he’s…” Dick choked on the words.

“You  _knew_?” Jason snapped, turning his head towards Dick. “You  _knew,_  and you brought us  _here_?”

Dick half turned to Jason, his face twisted with grief and anger. Lois saw the boy was torn between processing what Clark had just said and going to Jason, but he gasped and shook his head. “ _J_ -  _Robin_.”

But Robin was making a hasty retreat, turning on his heel and storming out of the room. “Robin!” Dick shouted again, and he ran after Jason. Lois went after them, and she could hear chairs scraping to follow them. When she looked over her shoulder, Superman, Black Canary and Wonder Woman were all in tow, but she put her hand up, annoyed at the heroes.

“I’ve got this.” She kept following Dick’s heels and, much to her annoyance, Clark came too. She was mad at him, but he wasn’t her priority.

She found them down the hall, in a room filled with computers. Jason was at the terminal, typing something away as Dick stood beside him. “Robin,” Dick said, trying to get his attention. His voice was broken. “Robin…  _Jason_.” 

That only got Jason to pause for a minute before he continued typing away. 

“I didn’t know,” Dick whispered, giving up on trying to get him to look. “Jason, please,” Dick begged.

“Boys,” Clark said, entering the room just behind her. Lois sighed and pressed her hand to her forehead to stave off the headache of Clark making things worse.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” Jason bit out, pointing at Clark for a second, before going back to the computer. “Fucking liar.”

Dick didn’t even admonish him. “Robin if you just listen,” Clark began but in one minute, Jason was standing beside to the computer, and in the next moment, he was flying at Clark with an almighty yell and punched him in the jaw with all his strength.

“Jason!” Dick shouted as Jason flew back, grasping his fist in pain. Clark had barely flinched, but for the first time in Lois’s memory, he looked like a man who had just been punched. Not in pain, or slowly swelling, but the shock that came with being hit was written across his face.

Dick grabbed Jason around his waist because, though he was cradling his wrist and looked like he was in an immense amount of pain, he surged forward again. “Calm down!” Dick hissed in his ear, barely able to hold him back. “Calm… just calm down.”

“You  _liar!_ ” Jason shouted at Clark. “You’re a liar! You’re not a hero!”

“Jason, I’m not lying,” Clark said softly.

“Then you’re a murderer!” Jason screamed, and Lois’s heart broke for him as tears began to creep into his eyes. “But you’re not. You’re a liar because Bruce is alive. I  _know_  he’s alive and I’m going to get him back!”

Clark opened his mouth to say something else, but Lois stepped between him and Jason. “Stop talking to him. You’re not making it any better, Clark.” Jason was still struggling in Dick’s arms, and Lois turned to him, deciding someone needed to take charge of the situation.

“Jason, stop. You’ve hurt yourself, and you’re going to hurt Dick.”

“Tell him to let me go!” he snapped.

“Tell me what you want to do first,” Lois said. “I’ll get him to let you go when I know you’re not going to try and hit Clark again.”

Jason stopped struggling, glaring up at Lois. “I’m going to turn on Batman’s tracker. I’m going to find him.”

“Okay,” Lois said, calmly indicating to Dick to let Jason go. He did, after a beat, and his arms fell limp to his side. Jason stumbled slightly as he went back to the computers, finishing whatever he had been typing with one hand. “What’s the code to his tracker?” Jason demanded, from Dick.

Dick closed his eyes, looking towards the ceiling for a moment of strength. “The password is, Contingency Plan.”

Jason typed it in with one hand, and on the larger screen above Jason’s head, a map appeared of the world. Lois went and stood behind Jason, resting her hand on his shoulder as they both stared up together. A marker flew around the screen as the GPS deliberated until it froze and narrowed down to North America, and the forests outside Metropolis where the heroes had gone to find Parasite’s secret base. It narrowed in further, pinpointing his location to a cliffside.

Then his stats were displayed on the screen.

Dick made a noise, halfway between a groan and a cry and Clark moved to rest his hand on Dick’s shoulder as the BMP showed 0 and there were no signs of any other vitals. “That doesn’t mean shit,” Jason snapped, looking over his shoulder at Dick. “Tech fails. We know that.”

Dick couldn’t even speak, he was so overwhelmed, and Lois wrapped her arm around Jason. “Jay,” she whispered. “I know it’s hard.”

“It’s not hard!” Jason snapped. “None of you know Bruce. He’s not dead. He’s  _not!_ ”

“Jason,” Lois whispered. The heart monitor was flat, and she couldn’t help but remember when she’s first met Bruce.

It was before Jason.

Before Dick.

Before Lois knew who Superman was, let alone Batman.

But Bruce had known. Known who Clark was and knew that, at the time, Clark and Lois had broken up and how much Clark loved her.

So Bruce did the only thing a good frenemy could.

He’s asked her out, with a sly smile.

And Lois, knowing it would kill Clark to see her out with a billionaire, said yes.

It had been a great night and, although they had both started the evening as the playboy billionaire and the reporter trying to nail down an exclusive, they’d finished the evening laughing harder than either of them had imagined and friends. Bruce had gotten a soft kiss on the cheek, and Lois later got rescued by Batman, which only went to infuriate Clark more.

“Jason, it’s…”

“He’s not gone!” Jason snapped, shrugging off her arm. He turned to face Dick and Clark. “I don’t care what this says. I don’t care what you saw. It doesn’t make sense for Parasite to kill him. He can’t use him if he’s dead.”

“He died in the cave-in. It was an accident…”

“Batman doesn’t have  _accidents_.”

“Jason,” Dick said softly, trying to pull himself together just for Jason’s sake. “Listen…” But his voice broke, and Jason stared at Dick, horrified as if his cracking voice proved something that the computer screen didn’t.

Jason stared at Dick and his anguished features, and something clicked in Jason’s head that made his knees gave out. Luckily, the computer desk chair was behind him and caught him before he fell to the ground, and Dick moved in front of him, kneeling down with his hands on Jason’s knees.

“Listen, Jay… something  _bad_  has happened,” Dick said gently. “Really bad. And I know it’s scary, but it’s... It’s not the biggest deal right now.” Jason gaped at Dick, but the elder quickly squeezed his leg. “No, listen to me. If Bruce were here, he would tell us that the more pressing matter is that right now Parasite knows who we are, and knows how to get in and out of our security systems. He knows how to find us, Babs, and Alf. So right now the four of us need to go and–”

“We have to find Bruce!” Jason screeched, staring at Dick in horror, already aware of what Dick was going to suggest.

Dick shook his head. “Jay, we’ve got no choice right–”

“He wouldn’t leave without us!”

“I know that but–”

“You told me to never leave without him! You told me, no matter what, get him into the car, and get him home! That was the first thing you told me when I became Robin. You drilled it into me, every time you punched me or kicked me or threw me down in training! ‘Don’t leave Batman behind.’ You made me recite it  _every damn time_  I fell. So how could  _you_  leave  _him_  now?” Jason was hysterical, and Dick fell silent, staring down at Jason’s knees. He leant forward and pressed his head in Jason’s lap and, for a second, Jason was confused. 

But after that passed, he leant forward and wrapped his arms around Dick’s back and Lois realised that Dick was crying. Shaking and crying and Jason was so stunned that he stroked Dick’s back.

When he did it was awkward and jaunty, the motions belonging to a robot, not a boy. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry, Dick… Dickie. P-please don’t…” Jason wrapped his arms around. “We’ll get Bruce. You and me, I… Come on. We’ll do it together. We… we can’t leave him.”

Dick reached out and grabbed Jason around his waist, pulling his brother down to him, and the two raven-haired boys sat on the floor together, gripping each other for dear life. Dick pressed his face next to Jason’s ear and said something, so quiet, Lois couldn’t hear but Clark could and he looked away, blushing as if they were intruding.

Lois approached, wanting more than anything, to take some of their pain away when Jason’s grip on Dick’s back went slack, and his head slid down his shoulder. Lois gasped, and Clark went to move, but Dick stood up, hoisting Jason in his arms. Jason was limp in his Robin suit, head tilted back and arm hanging off his body. He swallowed back whatever remaining tears he had, adjusting Jason in his arms. 

“You and Clark can repay that favour you owe us.”

* * *

The League did not approve Dick’s mission, but Dick reminded them that the Titan’s were not a part of the League officially. While special credence had been given to Batman to pick and choose their missions when Dick had been eleven, Dick was not an eleven-year-old boy anymore.

“I’ve already spoken to Speedy and KF. We’re taking this mission from the Justice League. Batman is my father,” Nightwing said to Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman. They were gathered in Flash’s hospital room as he told them his idea, with Lois sat in the visitor's chair, and the unconscious Robin sprawled over her lap.

He was heavy, but he reminded her of Jonathan and the way he slept with his head tucked into Lois’ neck. Even though his sleep was sedated, she kept stroking his hair as if to calm him. She wondered if it was just calming herself as she listened to Dick talk.

“It’s a mad scheme,” Wonder Woman said, and Lois agreed. “It may not work.”

“I have to try. If Batman is dead, we can lay him to rest in the Family Crypt. But I’m with Robin on this. Parasite’s motivation would be to keep him alive. Something is wrong, and I have to find out what happened.”

He looked over his shoulder at Lois. “But I need you to take Robin. Take him somewhere safe that’s hard to get out from. Keep him there and make sure he doesn’t leave. I have a bag for him of spare clothes on the ship. Take away his uniform and his utility belt. He can still get away without it, but it’ll be harder.”

Which was how Lois, Clark, and a sedated Jason ended up on the Javelin-7 back to Smallville. The ride was slower than when Dick flew them to the Watchtower because Clark was piloting and the speed was most likely something Bruce programmed in that only the Bats knew about. “You’re quiet,” Clark said, as they flew through the short space between the Watchtower and the earth.

Lois looked over at Jason, slumped on the chair with a red cast wrapped around his right arm and a _D_ scribbled on the fist. “I’m mad at you,” Lois admitted.

“Mad… what? Because… because I left Bruce?” He sounded heartbroken, and Lois had to remember for a minute that the boys had lost their father, and Clark had also lost his best friend. Because the two heroes had different methods and tactics, but they were better friends than they’d ever admit. When Lois called Bruce about Parasite, he had already been on his way. They tormented each other, but they cared.

Much like Dick and Jason. They bickered and fought and swore at each other – or Jason swore – but she had seen the way Jason held Dick when he was crying and how Dick held his shoulder, pushing him into the League’s meeting room. Bruce and Clark didn’t touch, but they cared about each other almost as much as those boys did.

“No, Clark. No one blames you for what happened,” Lois said softly, and she rubbed her face and stared at Jason. “How could you tell Jason and Dick that in front of everyone? They’re not members of the League, Clark. They’re _kids_. Bruce’s kids and you told him he died and how they died with sixty plus supers to witness their breakdown.”

It only dawned on Clark then why Lois was mad at him, but he shook his head out. “They aren’t normal kids, Lois.”

“No, they’re not,” Lois snapped. “They’re two boys who have already lost one set of parents, and you told them the only one they had left is dead in a room where they have to wear masks.”

Clark flinched and looked over his shoulder at Jason. “I… I wasn’t thinking. I just… Bruce told me to protect them. He’s told me thousands of times, that if anything were to happen to him, he wanted me to protect them, and I thought if everyone was there, I could just… take them away.”

“Protecting them includes protecting their feelings. If something ever happened to us and the League pulled that on Jonathan, I would rise from the dead to kill them. You broke their hearts, and it was a wonder it took so long for Jason to punch you.”

Clark closed his eyes and tilted his head back on the chair, and Lois was briefly thankful for the autopilot. “Okay. I screwed up. I don’t know what to do to make it better, though.”

“Well let’s get back to the farm. Conner said he dropped Jonathan off there, and Ma and Pa know we’re coming.”

Clark twitched. “I’m not happy about what Dick is dragging him into.”

“Dick isn’t dragging him anywhere. He gave them all an option to not come. I don’t like the plan either, but now _is_ the time to remember he’s not a normal kid. He created his own League when he was eleven, and you saw how all the other sidekicks reacted when he called them. They dropped everything to help Dick, because they follow him wherever he goes.” because they follow him wherever he goes.”

They did. Kid Flash, Beast Boy, Aqualad, Troia, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Hawk and Dove, Guardian, Bumblebee, Raven, Starfire, Superboy, Supergirl, Lar Gand, Cyborg, M’gann, Artemis, Raquel, Zatanna, Blue Beetle…

They arrived in groups of two or three before Dick had even left the meeting with the League. “They’re all good kids,” Lois whispered. “They’ll be safe going after Parasite together.” A part of her was trying to convince herself, and she had flashes of Conner, Kara and Mon-El going up against that purple creature and fear clenched at her stomach.

Clark fell silent, most probably thinking the same thing as Lois.

They reached the Kent farm, and Clark landed the jet in a field, turning on the cloaking device. It was late afternoon, and Dick told Lois the sedative would last until the next morning. Clark picked up Jason and carried him inside, behind Lois.

Martha and Jonathan met them on the front steps. “Get him upstairs,” Martha said, hurrying them along. “We’ll get him nice and warm.”

Clark took him to the guest room, and Lois was just behind him and watched as he laid Jason down on the bed. He arranged Jason’s arms and limbs around and carefully took his mask off. Clark was one of the few people in the world who could take off a Bats masks without being hurt, and he laid it on the bedside. “You and Mom can get him dressed,” Clark murmured, unbuckling his belt and taking out Jason’s comms. “I’m going to hide these on top of the barn.”

Lois stopped Clark before he left altogether with a hand on his chest. He was the strongest man in the world, but it made Lois’ heart skip the fact she could stop him with a single look. She got up on her toes and Clark leant down, sensing what she wanted, as she kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry,” Lois whispered. “I know you must be hurting right now.”

Clark trembled and his eyes shut. “I was _so_ close. I could have… He said _go_ , and I just did what he said.”

“I know.”

“I was going to go back for him. After we had the boys safe.”

“I know.” She cupped his jaw and pressed her lips to Clark’s again. “You’re not a bad man, Clark Kent.”

Clark’s eyes flickered over to Jason’s wrist. “I’m not a good one either. I’m no Bruce Wayne. I don’t know how he takes care of those kids. My parents take care of Conner, and the Danver’s are good people for taking in Kara, and I only have to check Mon-El isn’t just eating junk food once a week. I’m still amazed we can take care of Jonathan with minimal help.”

“Bruce does have an Alfred,” Lois pointed out.

Clark hummed. “True. Maybe we can get Alfred to move into our apartment.”

“With two boys, the constant visits from your protégés and my sister and a baby? Sure. We can fit Jonathan into the pantry.”

Clark chuckled and pecked Lois’s lips again. “I love you.”

“Love you too. Always.” Because she did. Forever, and ever, and ever…

* * *

 

It was mid-morning the next day when Jason woke up. Lois was sat down eating breakfast in the kitchen dining room as Ma Kent fed Jonathan and Pa Kent and Clark spoke intensely about the football game from the night before when a large  _crash_  was heard upstairs, and they all looked up.

There was a  _bang_  of the door and then thunderous footsteps running down the hall and the stairs into the kitchen.

Jason ran down the stairs two at a time, jumping down them and paused in the kitchen, counting heads, his right arm in a cast from where he broke his wrist on Clark’s face. They’d dressed him in some warm pants, his own AC/DC shirt and a flannel they had left over from when Conner stayed there the weekend before. It was too big on him and skirted around his calves, and he looked around in a frenzied panic.

“Where is Dick?” Jason demanded.

“He’s not here,” Clark said calmly. “He’s on a mission.”

Jason’s fist balled up on either side of him and turned red in the face. He didn’t say anything, however, and went to the backdoor, storming outside. Lois stood up, but Clark held up his hand. “He’s running through the cornfield.”

“We’ve got to stop him!”

“I’ll get him when he’s tired,” Clark said, but the look Lois fixed him with made the alien get up with a large dramatic sigh and walk out of the house. A minute later Clark was back with a flailing Jason in his arms and manhandled him into a chair next to Martha.

“Jason, dear, would you like some pancakes?” Martha offered kindly as if he hadn’t run out.

Jason opened his mouth but looked at Martha and slammed his jaw shut. Lois knew he had no problem yelling at the other heroes, but there were certain people – Alfred, Mr and Mrs Kent, the doctor in Gotham the Bats always went to – that he wouldn’t disrespect. “I’d  _like_  to know what the hell is going on,” he said, his voice tense but diplomatic.

“Dick believes you,” Clark said evenly. “He thinks Bruce is alive. He’s heading a mission with the Titans to find him, and he wants you to stay here until he does.”

“Why can’t I join them?” Jason demanded.

“Well you broke your wrist for one thing,” Lois said, and Jason glanced at the red cast that had been fitted on his arm and picked out by Dick. “Also, Dick wanted to go alone. He hasn’t even asked the League for help.”

“I’m not the League. I’m Bruce’s son.”

“I think he wanted to go alone,” Clark said.

Jason glared at Clark. “You don’t get to talk to me. Just because you’re  _Superman_  doesn’t mean I like you. I’m not Dick.”

“That’s fine,” Clark reasoned. “But you’re not leaving the farm until Dick comes back or until we get in contact with Alfred, who has gone underground with Barbara. So you have to at least respect the idea that I’m going to be around.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “I’ve lived by myself before. I’m going back to Gotham, and I’m going to find Dick.”

“No you’re not, Jason,” Lois said gently. She reached across the table as Jonathan babbled into her ear and held his hand. “You’re a kid.”

“I was a kid then too,” Jason said, yanking his hand away. “Parents dying and leave me alone, isn’t something new.” All the shuffling of plates and cutlery on the table ceased, and everyone stared at Jason, captivated by his harsh words. “But this time I can do something about it. So I’m either going to go now or hotwire your truck in the middle of the night. It’s up to you guys. But until you can give me one solid reason to stick around, I’m going to go hit my brother over the head for abandoning me here in bumpkin land, and finding my Dad.” He pushed out of the chair and grabbed a slice of toast from the table before leaving a second time.

Lois looked imploringly at Clark, and he sighed again, going back outside.

It took four minutes that time, and Lois was worried Jason might have broken another hand the way he was shaking his left one. “We can do this all day,” Clark said, dumping Jason back in the chair.

They did.

Jason got out eight more times and each time Clark got up, caught him and brought him back to the house. One time he’d gotten all the way to the town before they’d even noticed he was missing, but he never managed it back to Gotham.

He was tired and grumpy by the end of the day, and John patted his shoulder as he sat on the couch glaring at the television screen late in the evening. “Now I know you said you’d hotwire the truck, but I need it first thing in the morning and would much rather not have Clark’s handprints in it. So maybe hotwire the tractor?”

Lois smiled from her armchair with her laptop, and Jason rolled his eyes. “Goodnight, Mr Kent,” he muttered.

“Night Jason,” John chuckled, ruffling Jason’s hair.

Martha had gone up earlier, and it was only Clark, Lois, and Jason left with leftover slices of carrot cake on the coffee table. “Are you going to try and run tonight?” Clark asked. Jason ignored him, staring at the TV. “Jason? Jason?” But Jason stared coldly ahead.

“Are you going to try and run tonight, Jason?” Lois asked instead.

“Probably.” He nodded. He’d been outright ignoring things Clark had said all day, and it was tiresome and immature, but he wasn’t coping well at all.

“Well I’ll set the alarm then,” Clark muttered, getting up on his feet. He tried to pat Jason on the shoulder, much like John had done earlier, but Jason dodged the hand by throwing himself sideways onto the couch. Clark sighed, not quite used to being despised by children. “Okay, kid. Maybe try and sleep tonight. You’ll probably enjoy it more.”

Clark looked at Lois, but she shook her head, choosing instead to stay up with Jason. It had been a long day for her, but she could imagine that his must have felt longer. She was surprised that with all the running he’d done he was still so awake so late, but she wanted to stay with him until he was tired. “Jay and I are going to watch a movie,” Lois said, pulling out the laptop. “I’ve got the best thing cued up.”

She got up, careful not to let Jason see her computer screen as she ran a cable from the laptop to the TV. He frowned at her, watching the screen curiously, along with Clark when the first paused scene popped up. “How did you find that?” Jason gaped. “I can’t download it anywhere!”

Lois downed the lights of the computer screen which mimicked the first few shots of the two-part Odyssey movie and took out her remote to control it from the couch. “It’s a secret, kid.” It wasn’t much of a secret. Lois asked Iris if her TV station ever played it and when she realised they had, she sent over a digital copy. “We’ve got popcorn, ice cream, lollies… What do you want?”

Jason hesitated, cheeks flushed. “Do you have vanilla or strawberry?” he asked.

“We have both, don’t we Clark?” Lois said, looking up at her husband sweetly, batting her eyelashes with a sugary smile. They had never actually had any of those things but having a superpowered husband had its perks.

He sighed, realising he had one more trip to make before he went to bed and nodded. “Yep. A bucket of each?”

“And some caramel praline, please?”

Clark leant into Lois and pecked her on the lips and cast a long frustrated look at Jason. “Call if you forget something.” Jason ignored him, and Clark shook his head and went to get his jacket and keys, going out the back door.

Jason stared at the television screen, his eyes blinking rapidly. Lois quietened and looked at him, and small tears slid down the side of his face. “Hey, hey, Jason.” Lois went and sat next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. He stood there stiffly, staring at the screen as more tears fell. “Jason, it’s okay… We don’t have to watch this if you don’t want to.”

“Bruce watched this with me. Just once. It was on TV and didn’t tell him why I wanted to watch it so bad, but he sat through the whole thing without saying a word. Just had his arm around my shoulder. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I was in my bed. That had never happened before, but it happened all the time when I moved in with Bruce. Sometimes I’d just let myself fall asleep in random places just to see if he would still carry me upstairs. I don’t do that anymore, but last week I fell asleep in the cave and  _boom_. Woke up in bed. He just picks me up and carries me and never complains or pokes or prods. I mean, he can’t do that forever, I know that but… it’s nice.”

Lois held Jason closer. “You know, Bruce may not show much emotion in general but… He was so proud of you and Dick.”

“Is,” Jason corrected quietly.

“Is proud of you and Dick,” she agreed.

“I hate him,” Jason whispered. For a moment, Lois thought Jason was talking about Clark, but he continued. “I can’t believe after everything, Dick doesn’t trust me to help. He’s such a… He’s a dick.”

Lois shook her head. “No, Jay, I don’t think it’s because he can’t trust you. You didn’t see him after he sedated you. He was really determined that we keep you safe.”

“I can keep myself safe. I could keep him and me alive while he does his stupid little flips.”

“I’m sure he knows that, but I think, he’s just as afraid of you getting hurt as you are of something happening to him. He wants to find Bruce, but he’s scared of something happening to you too, so he left you here to keep you safe.”

“I’m Robin,” Jason said. “I’ve been trained by Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Selina Kyle, Dinah Lance, Diana Prince,  _and_  Dick Grayson. He’s the one who taught me how to take care of myself.”

“If you had to pick between Dick and Bruce, who would you choose?” Lois asked.

“Bruce, because clearly, Dick is a dick,” Jason said without question.

“Be serious.”

Jason glared at Lois. “I am.”

Lois matched his gaze and didn’t falter. “Really? Because I think you wouldn’t know who to pick. I know Dick wouldn’t know who to pick. And I’m sure that’s why he left you behind. Because if something happened that got you into trouble, and he had to pick between you and Bruce he would… Well, I think he’d pick you every time. I think he’d pick you and leave Bruce, and he doesn’t want to be put in that position.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“Yes he would, Jason. I saw how upset he was when he found out Bruce died. It was nothing compared to how terrified he was when he watched you leave the room.”

Jason stared straight ahead and held his broken fist in his other hand. “He said, ‘I love you.’”

Lois was lost momentarily and frowned. “What?”

“Dick. Before he hit me with the sedative. He said, ‘I love you’ and knocked me out. He never… No one… Only mom…” Jason squeezed his jaw together and stared at his fist. “That was the first time anyone’s said that to me, who wasn’t high, and who meant it. I don’t want it to be the last.”

Lois wrapped her arm around Jason’s shoulders and rested her chin on his head. “It’s not going to be. Dick will be back.”

Jason didn’t agree or not agree, still staring at the paused screen. He moved his hand up his wrist and tried to slide his pinky into the cast to scratch the skin. Lois pulled his hand away and reached over to the side draw where she found a motel pen from somewhere. She gave that to Jason who took it gratefully and scratched. “You know, you’re lucky it was a clean break and that nothing shattered. You could have permanently taken out your arm punching Clark like that.”

“He deserves it,” Jason growled, anger in his eyes. Lois was a little taken aback. Not a lot of people – not a lot of  _good_  people, hated Superman. But Jason had pure venom in his voice. “He should have saved Bruce.”

But Lois wasn’t going to let Jason stay aimlessly angry at Clark. “Bruce told him to save Barry.”

“He should have saved both. He’s Superman.”

“And Bruce is Batman. He should have been able to save himself.”

Jason’s jaw shut at her logic. Even in his mind, she was right. Batman should have been able to save himself. “What happened?” he muttered under his breath. “How did B let himself get taken?” He was so frustrated, he needed to understand something. Have one single straightforward answer.

“It went wrong,” Lois whispered. “Sometimes it goes wrong.”

“I should have been there. I can always get him out if it’s wrong,” Jason replied.

_But Mom is very dead. I was there. Or wasn’t… I went out when I shouldn’t have._

Lois pulled him against her, so his head was on her stomach and nodded for him to stretch out his legs. When he was more comfortable, Lois took some tissues from the side table and dried his eyes then stroked his hair, soothingly. “You’re not to blame, Jason. For Bruce… for anything that might happen to Dick… for Catherine.”

He tensed up against her at the mention of his mother’s name. “You weren’t there, and you shouldn’t punish yourself for not being there. Dick is trying to protect you because he very clearly loves you, Bruce knew it would be a dangerous mission and left you behind because he worries, and your mother’s death had nothing to do with you seeing Die Hard and everything to do with her.

“So calm yourself down little Robin,” she murmured. He relaxed against her, ear to her heart and Lois thought to herself that if something had happened to Bruce, she would be more than happy to have the blue-eyed kid in her life.

She heard a rustling and looked up to see Clark, standing in the doorway holding three tubs of ice cream, spoons and a bucket of popcorn from the movie theatre in town.

He offered Lois a weak smile, and he came in, holding out the treats. “I have strawberry, vanilla, caramel praline and went and got a giant popcorn with extra salt and butter. I think I remember Bruce complaining about how much you put in the popcorn once, so I thought it would be best.”

Jason sat up to help take the things from Clark, but after he did, settled back down on Lois’s stomach and held the strawberry bucket of ice cream in his hands. “Mom’s favourite,” he muttered when he opened the pink box. “And Dad only ever bought vanilla or strawberry.”

“They’re good flavours,” Lois said.

Jason shrugged, but stabbed his spoon into the top and had a mouthful anyway, throwing in a giant hand of popcorn into his mouth.

“Well I’m going to actually try and go to bed now,” Clark said. “Unless the two of you want anything else.”

“Keep the monitor on you in case Jon wakes up,” Lois said, handing him the monitor. “And your phone in case we need something else.”

Clark rolled his eyes and leant down, pecking Lois on the lips. “Good night, Lois. Night, Jay.”

“Night Uncle Clark,” Jason murmured, taking a second spoonful.

Clark paused, looking down at Jason and after a minute reached out and touched his head. Jason moved away, but it was more out of annoyance of having his hair ruined as he quickly fixed it up again. “Your Dad already messed it up once. I don’t want to fix it again,” he said, barely looking up.

Lois smiled up at Clark.  _It’s an improvement,_  she thought and with a single glanced he understood and chuckled to himself, going up the stairs.

Later, when the movie was mostly over, and Jason had fallen asleep with a spoon in his mouth, Lois texted Clark to come downstairs, and he did, lifting Jason up and carrying him to bed, where they both tucked him into the bed and blankets without disturbing him.

* * *

It was late afternoon when Clark got the call to go back to the Watchtower, and John Stewart picked them up, lining Clark, Lois and Jason in the Green Lantern light before flying them up to space. They’d given Jason his suit and utility belt back, and he began running upstairs to put them on before they’d barely touched his hand. He hadn’t tried to run again, but he did ask for his comms back and hacked a few lines to listen in on what was going on, but couldn’t find one with Dick on them.

“You know M’gann is a telepath,” Clark pointed out. “Maybe they just share a mental link. We do with J’onn sometimes. It’s more secure.”

Jason had grumbled about  _powers_ but kept searching the lines.

But flying into space in a giant green bubble was the most frightened Lois had seen him. “This cannot be safe,” Jason muttered.

Lois couldn’t help but agree, but Clark just shrugged as they breached the atmosphere with little issue.

It took longer to get to the Watchtower than when the Javelin-7 took them, but once they did, Jason spotted Agent A, Batgirl and Green Arrow chatting quietly. “You’re here,” Green Arrow said, beaming. “Come on. Follow me.”

Batgirl reached out her arm, and Robin let go of Lois’s hand and flew straight to her. She smiled sadly as the two of them headed off, whispering quietly and updating each other on everything that just happened.

They twisted around the Watchtower and Lois considered that it was designed much like Wayne Manor filled with confusing twists and turns. When they arrived at a hallway, Jason apparently knew where they were because he ran out ahead of Oliver and slammed in the code.

The doors opened, and Kid Flash tumbled out of the room, having been leant on the door. “Oh hey, Rob.” Wally beamed down at Jason and ruffled his hair, and Jason smacked his hands away.

Lois and Clark just reached the doors as Jason marched in and pushed through a sea of young Superheroes all of whom Dick had befriended or worked with over the years who were gathered in the medical bay around a bed, including Kara, Mon-El and Conner. They parted for Robin, Batgirl and Alfred, and Lois and Clark snuck in just behind as Nightwing, standing on crutches, his ankle strapped up, and Batman, alive and unconscious, in a large bed, hooked up to various monitors was revealed. 

“‘Wing!” Jason gasped, going straight to Dick and Dick opened his arms as Jason hugged his side. Barbara went up to him too and hugged them both, and they stood that way quietly for the moment.

“Okay, how about the rest of you head out so the Bats can get some rest?” Green Arrow suggested.

There were some grumbles and shoulder pats as they all filed out, one by one as Clark gaped at his friend on the bed. Barbara pulled away but hovered nearby Dick as Alfred took Bruce’s hand, and they all stood in silence for a minute after everyone left.

“He wasn’t breathing. I swear he wasn’t breathing,” Clark whispered, still staring at Bruce.

Jason hadn’t moved from Dick’s side, so he just shifted the younger hero enough so he could see Superman better. “He probably wasn’t. Our suits have a jumpstart in case our heart stops. He was compressed under rocks so it wouldn’t have worked straight away, but when Parasite pulled him out, it must have triggered it, and that brought him back.”

“And the tracking device?” Lois asked.

Dick rubbed his face with exhaustion. “Got destroyed in the crash. The tracking chip still worked, but it couldn’t read lifelines.”

“So when we checked, it said he wasn’t alive,” Lois said.

Dick nodded and grabbed Jason by his hair and pulled his head back until he was looking at him, still managing to balance with his crutches. “I should’ve never believed he died. I’m sorry. You were right. Robin never leaves Batman behind.”

“You got hurt,” Jason quietly replied.

“I landed wrong.”

“ _You_  landed wrong?”

“I was distracted. Was trying to carry B.”

“You left me behind.”

“I kept you safe.”

“I wanted to kill you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Jason frowned at him, and his cheeks flushed. “You know I love you too, right?” He said it so softly that Lois almost didn’t hear him, but Dick did, and he let go of Jason’s head and let him settle his face back on his shoulder.

“I know, Jaybird. I know.” Dick settled his cheek on the top of Jason’s head and sighed, looking over at Lois and Clark. “Thanks for taking him. And Alf, Babs, sorry I left without saying anything.”

“We’ll talk about how much trouble you are in, once Master Bruce has woken,” Alfred said curtly, not taking his eyes off Bruce’s face. “And Master Richard? You did a good job getting him back. We’ll arrange for him to be moved back to the home, and have Dr Leslie look over Bruce and that leg of yours.”

“Okay Alfred,” Dick replied. “Okay.”

* * *

Clark had to go to Metropolis because Lex had built a war machine and…

Lois shook her head out, leaning heavily on her hand. For Clark and Luthor it was just another day that ended with Y, but in Wayne Manor, it was anything but another day.

After very little persuasion on Alfred’s part who threatened some of the world’s most powerful superheroes with a look, Bruce was moved to Wayne Manor and equipment had been set up by his private physician, an older woman named Leslie Thompkins. She tutted her tongue and Bruce and asked what trouble he got himself into, and Jason just said that Bruce was an idiot. Lois had decided to stay behind at Wayne Manor to make sure everyone was okay, while Martha and John looked after baby Jonathan, but was surprised to find Dick and Jason had most things handled without even Alfred’s help.

The boys had agreed to work shifts to stay by Bruce’s bed. It hadn’t worked the way they planned though. Jason took the first and Dick supposed to have taken the second, but when Dick got in the room, Jason had fallen asleep with his head on Bruce’s shoulder. Dick left him there, but when Lois had gone in to check on them, Dick had also fallen asleep, sitting on a chair but sprawled over Bruce’s stomach with his hand trapped in Jason’s.

Lois decided to pull up another chair in the room and watch all three of the boys.

She had been nodding off too when Bruce’s eyes moved under his lids and the arm underneath Jason moved and reached up automatically for Jason’s head.

He patted his hair awkwardly, but gently enough that Jason never woke up, and then moved his other arm to Dick’s back and tapped him lightly between the blades and hummed. Jason shifted, but Bruce opened his eyes and calmed him instantly, with his hand in his hair and small circles under his ear with his thumb.

Lois watched in marvel as Bruce calmed both the boys while he was barely awake. He closed his eyes again to catch a moment and then reopened them to look around and assess Dick and Jason with his brows heavy set and filled with scrutiny. “Morning,” Lois whispered as his eyes glanced around the room and landed on her. “Or evening. Either way.”

“What are you doing here?” Bruce asked, his throat dry and croaky. Lois got some water for him from the bedside and carefully held out the straw to him. Bruce took it gratefully and managed down a few long sips.

“I thought I’d stick around. It’s been a dramatic weekend for the boys, and I wanted to make sure they were okay.” Lois looked at Dick, but her eyes landed specifically on Jason.

Bruce seemed to notice this, and he followed her eyes and looked at Jason again, his eyes specifically falling on his cast. He frowned and opened his mouth, but he was still exhausted, so Lois supplied him with he needed to know. “Jason punched Clark. Hard. Broke his wrist.”

Bruce blinked in surprise, and Lois chuckled without waiting for his reply. “Yeah, I know. Clark was shocked too, but Jason was pissed off because Clark had left you behind. He was pissed off even more because Clark wouldn’t believe him when he said you were alive. But he believed in you a lot more than we all did.”

With a sigh of understanding, Bruce tightened his arm around Jason gratefully. “How’d I get out?”

“You don’t remember?” Lois asked.

Bruce shook his head. “I was unconscious… He kept draining my energy for my memories.”

“Dick got you out, with the Titans. He assumed that if Parasite got your strengths, he also got your weaknesses, and cracked out your batch of kryptonite and took any Titan who answered his called and two Kryptonians. Tore some ligaments in his ankle while trying to carry you out of there, and now Parasite is sitting in the Phantom Zone until you and the rest of the League decide what to do with him.”

Bruce moved his hand over Dick’s head and down his back, settling in on his shoulder again. “Hmm… Thank you. For looking after them.”

“They mostly look after themselves,” Lois said with a small shrug. “They’re good boys. You did a good job.”

“I got them that way,” Bruce murmured, his eyes growing heavy again.

Lois decided it was time to go. There was nothing left for her to do. The boys didn’t need her, now that everything was right again. Not that they needed her to begin with. They could have gotten on fine either way. She collected her bag from next to the bed and swung it over her shoulder, but paused when she remembered something. “You should tell Jason you love him. Dick too, for that matter.”

Bruce frowned at Lois, unconsciously rubbing Jason’s head gently with his thumb. “They know.”

“Maybe. But Jason told me that no one’s ever told them without being on drugs first. Except for Dick, the other day.”

Bruce looked down at Jason’s face and then over to Dick, still asleep with his hand latched on tight to Jason’s good one. “Thank you, Lois.”

Lois nodded. “You’re welcome, Bruce.”

And with that, Lois left the Batfamily alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may notice that the story changed from 6 mothers to 8 (instead of 7) and that is because there is one person you all kept guessing was a mother and I got a really good idea and I've actually spent the last four days writing it. I'm editing it right now.
> 
> It's not until chapter 7 though, so there is that.


	5. Diana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diana had the easiest job. Take care of Jason for the weekend while he was grounded.  
> One weekend with one teenaged boy.  
> How hard could that be?

“I don’t need a babysitter!” Jason complained as Bruce pushed his youngest towards Diana Prince’s office. She stood outside of it, arms crossed over her chest wearing a black pantsuit with her hair tied up on the top of her head, watching them with a small amused smile.

When Bruce had phoned Diana and asked her to look after Jason for the weekend because he was grounded, she was surprised by her own eagerness. But something in her of late had been missing, like a giant empty space in her chest that only filled when she was with the Titans, or Donna, or Cassie, or Jason. She had agreed and immediately planned an exciting weekend for them.

Bruce wore a suit and was carrying Jason’s rucksack over his shoulder, steering Jason with a hand on the back of his neck. “I especially do not need a psychiatrist.” He made a face and Bruce rolled his eyes.

“You’re grounded. Diana’s profession has no influence on her ability to take care of you for the weekend.”

“Why can’t I be grounded at home? Or in a hotel room in Metropolis?”

“Because I know how easy it is for you to say you had a good reason to go on patrol, and lying in a five-star suite doesn’t exactly punish you for spending eight thousand dollars on a hotel room that you didn’t even use.”

Jason opened his mouth to say something, but one look from Bruce made him close it again.

“Alfred is in London, Dick is in Happy Harbour, Barbara is sitting exams, and I need to go help Clark with an… issue. Diana is not a babysitter this weekend. She is your jailer.” They reached Diana’s side, and she beamed down at the youngest Wayne boy. When Bruce had first mentioned adopting a second child into the life, and given Diana and Clark his profile, Clark had objected to the criminal past of the boy.

“Training him to fight would just be giving him the ammunition he needs to be a crime lord,” Clark had snapped, throwing the papers back at Bruce.

But Diana had seen something else in the papers.

The boy was quite skilful and very smart, yet his crimes were small and never had any improvised victims. He could have been a Crime Lord already if he had tried but Jason only ever committed enough crime to survive. “I think you could make a good warrior out of him,” she said. “Well, as good as a _man_ can be.”

Bruce squeezed the back of his neck slightly and settled him in front of Diana. “It’s quite simple, Jason,” Diana said when the boys were close enough, a coy smile spreading out over her face. “Would you prefer to spend your weekend with Lois, helping her look after Jon, or would you like to go hiking with me through Blue Valley?”

Jason squished up his face in horror. Diana knew that Jason enjoyed spending time with young Jon Kent, but the idea of looking after a four-year-old for an entire weekend would be daunting to any sixteen-year-old. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do that second one.”

Bruce brushed some of Jason’s hair out of his face and settled his hands on his shoulder to look him in the eye. “Be good. Don’t make trouble. Remember you are grounded and no masks.”

“What if someone’s falling off the edge of the cliff?”

“Diana can fly. I’m sure she can figure it out.”

“What if Diana is falling off the edge of a cliff?”

“What part of _flight_ isn’t getting through to you right now?”

Jason raised his eyebrow. “She could be unconscious.”

Bruce sighed and looked to the heavens for strength. “Save Diana. You’ve taken your utility belt, but it’s emergencies only. No. Masks. Unless you _have_  to keep your identity safe.” He added when Jason opened his mouth.

Jason relented and wrapped his arms around Bruce’s middle, and closed his eyes as he settled his head against Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce shot Diana a look, saying _this is what I’m talking about_ but hugged him back.

Diana had briefly been informed of what Jason had done to get grounded. Something about a girl he liked who had embarrassed him because he was adopted after he had bought her a night’s stay in a hotel room to impress her. Diana had never quite understood why some people, mostly the ones who sat in positions like Bruce’s from old powerful families, were so narrow-minded when it came to what defined a family. On Themyscira, all the women were her sisters. Yes, she had a biological sister, but she was no more or less than Antiope, Paula, Elena, Nubia or any of her other sisters. The Amazonians were family, and it was that bond that strengthened them in a fight.

Looking at the way Bruce and Jason’s colours blended into one another though, it was hard to remember they weren’t biological. Jason was a smaller version of Bruce in so many ways, though he wore his pain on himself instead of shutting it away. Diana could see it in his every action. But Jason was still insecure about his place in the Wayne family.

“I’ll see you on Monday,” Bruce promised him as he pulled away.

“See you on Monday,” Jason replied softly, a little less sure of himself than before. Jason took his bag from Bruce and Bruce thanked Diana again and left after one last lingering look at Jason. Diana and Jason stood outside the door to her practice together, watching Bruce walk away until he was out of sight. When he was gone, Jason deflated. He watched the space Bruce had just emptied, and his jaw twitched.

Jason was not happy Bruce was going alone.

“He will be fine,” Diana said, rubbing his back. “He’ll be back before you even miss him.”

“They’re crossing into a parallel universe where bad is good and good is bad,” Jason muttered darkly, whatever childishness he’d just been playing up in front of Bruce disappeared. “It’s going to be the two of them versus the Injustice League. I should be going with them.”

“We have friends in that dimension who will take care of them,” Diana assured him, squeezing her arm around his shoulder. “And they call themselves the Crime Syndicate. The Injustice League is a separate universe. Owlman has designed a portal into our world, and your father and Clark are very well equipped to stop him.”

Jason still wasn’t reassured. “If something happens to him, I’m going to find where Bruce hides that giant rock of kryptonite and shove it so far up Clark’s–”

Diana squeezed Jason’s arm as she led him into her office. “Nothing will happen to Bruce.” She pressed her lips to his cheek and Jason squirmed uncomfortably. “Come in. I have another client today, but once he’s gone you and I will leave for Blue Valley. My secretary has gone home for the day so you can play on the computer.”

She went around to log him in, as Jason looked around the room filled with various books about the human mind. He liked books. When she called Dick the previous year to ask him what to get Jason for his birthday, he had just told her books, the same as every other year. “How is your brother?” Diana asked, going towards the coffee machine. She pointed towards it. “Want some?”

Jason made a face. “I’m not talking to him. Hot chocolate, please. Extra sugar.”

Diana smirked, somewhat amused as she turned the machine on. “Oh? Why not?”

“We had a fight at the Wayne Gala. Haven’t spoken since.”

“That’s not good,” Diana said, and Jason rolled his eyes. “You two shouldn’t fight. At the end of the day, you’re brothers, and I know you love each other.”

“The only person Dick loves his himself, and whoever he’s sleeping with,” Jason spat bitterly.

Diana was about to say something when the buzzer rang to her office. She sighed and handed Jason his hot chocolate. “We can talk about this later. Right now, stay put while I finish up with my client.”

She greeted her client and led him inside. She had explicitly told Jason to stay put, and he did as instructed… sort of.

When she went to walk her client out of the room, Jason was sprawled out on the couch in the waiting room, his arm dangling on the floor, fast asleep. Diana sighed and looked at her client. “I’m sorry. My nephew… he has jetlag.”

After her client left, Diana decided to clean up the office for the weekend. She got to the waiting room and paused in front of Jason. He was clutching a book to his chest, his thumb stuck in one of the pages. He was reading _Argonautica_ , the story of Jason and the Argonauts and she smiled to herself. She went back into her office and fished something from the shelves, and put it in her handbag, then got changed into shorts and a t-shirt for the hike. She went back outside and ran a hand through his hair. “Jason,” she said softly, as not to startle him. He hummed and leant into her touch.

Diana had wanted daughters for a long time, but it wasn’t until she was with Bruce when she met ten-year-old Dick Grayson, that she considered having a son. She’d broken up with Bruce long before Jason had arrived in the Manor, but Jason had made an impact on Diana despite it. He was impressive. His skills in the field, his intelligence, and the way he picked up fighting styles quickly. He was still a very angry little boy in a lot of ways, but with the proper guidance and training, he could be a great warrior.

“Jason.” She tried again, and he sighed, fluttering his eyes open. His big blue eyes looked up at her. She smiled at him. “Tired?”

He yawned and sat up. “No. Not really.” His cheek was flushed where his skin touched the leather, and she rested her knuckles there. He looked slightly paler than usual, and maybe his eyes were a little glazed over. “Are you feeling alright?”

Jason nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Diana shrugged off her worry and nodded to the door. “Let’s go. I have my things on the jet.”

Jason beamed up at her, and they walked up to the roof where Diana had parked the invisible jet. She could have just flown them both to Blue Valley from Gateway City, but she knew that Jason loved the invisible jet. When Bruce had asked Diana to take care of Jason for the weekend, despite his request to keep him grounded, Diana wanted to give him a treat.

She made it momentarily visible, and Jason grinned from ear to ear as he stepped inside, touching the ceiling and looking around. “It’s best if you sit down before we take off,” she said.

Jason did as he was told and buckled up too, looking around again at all the gear and the mechanics. She sat in the front of the jet and looked over her shoulder at him with a grin. “Are you ready?”

“This is the best part,” he laughed, breathlessly. Diana couldn’t help but be excited by his excitement.

With a thought, Diana turned the plane’s invisibility back on, and the machine disappeared around them, leaving Jason and Diana hovering in mid-air. Jason laughed, tilting his head back and stared up at the sky as it came closer and closer towards them. “I’ve got to convince B to do this to the jet,” Jason said.

“Your father finds the fact it doesn’t make passengers invisible quite impractical,” Diana informed him.

“It is the coolest thing in the world,” Jason retorted, and Diana couldn’t help but feel smug that a Bat had called her cool. _Wait until I tell Clark,_ she thought to herself as they took off towards Blue Valley, Nevada.

The flight was anything but boring. Jason always had a story to tell from his latest Batman and Robin adventure to the book he was reading. “So you’re reading Jason and the Argonauts.”

Jason was sat behind her, and she couldn’t see his face, but she could imagine the blush creeping up his cheeks. “Barbara keeps teasing me. I read this, the Odyssey and the Illiad every few months. They’re sort of my favourite.”

“Was it the name that led you to read the Argonauts?”

“Mom used to tell me the story when I was a kid. It’s why she named me Jason.”

“Jason is my great-uncle,” Diana said, and she could feel his awe radiating off his skin. “He married my grandmother’s sister, Hypsipyle and their granddaughter, Penthiselea, is one of the Amazonians greatest warriors.”

“That’s… is he still alive?”

“I do believe he still sails the seas.” Diana looked over her shoulder. “If we get to do this again when you’re not grounded, maybe we can take to the oceans and find him.”

“That would be amazing,” Jason replied.

They made it to Blue Valley in good time, and she parked the jet remotely near the beginning of the Blue Valley trail. They got out, and she took her rucksack too, and they made their way to the ranger station. Diana went inside to sign them in, and Jason said he wanted to tie his shoes and waited outside. The children of Man often had this flush of embarrassment at being parented publicly that she didn’t quite understand, but she let him be.

The Blue Valley trail was a two-night trek, with abseiling and rocking climbing options which Bruce had told her to take Jason on because it was the most gruelling and he kept insisting it was punishment. Because they were leaving so late on Friday, Diana didn’t expect them to be back until Monday at noon, long after Bruce was supposed to come home.

It was the perfect distraction.

When she went back outside to collect Jason, he was sipping on his water standing far off in amongst the bushes, which was odd, but he was sometimes an odd child. “Come on. I can tell you stories about the Argonauts if you want. Ones that weren’t written in any book,” she said.

Jason grinned, and together they headed off into the canyon.

The walk began easily enough, going down into the canyon. There were large steep steps, but they were both able to climb them and chatted along the way about a wide array of things. Jason wanted to learn Greek and, moreover, Ancient Greek but Bruce was teaching him German and Italian and planned to teach him Spanish and Greek once he perfected the first two.

“Well when you want to learn, you can come study with me,” Diana offered.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Jason shot Diana a wary look. “Why are you so nice to me? Does this have to do with Donna because–”

“It doesn’t have to do with Donna, no,” Diana said, her voice tinged with sadness. Donna hadn’t spoken with Diana for weeks. The day before she had announced her pregnancy to some man Diana had never even heard of before. Terrance Long was apparently her professor at college which was most likely why she was avoiding her. Diana thought she was too young to be a mother but…

She watched Jason walk on ahead having not noticed she’d stopped, and her heart ached with a yearning she hadn’t ever felt before. She had broken up with Bruce mutually, as they had barely been able to keep up with each other’s lives. Diana was in Gateway City, and she did not want to join the dreary city, and he would never leave Gotham defenceless.

But sometimes she wondered if she’d made a mistake in not making a sacrifice to be with him. Mr Terrific, her sister Cassie and the Arrowette shared the streets with her, and they did well-keeping everyone safe. Gotham only had the Bats who kept some of the world’s worst villains within its borders. If she had, she would have been a step-mother to both Dick and Jason.

 _An Amazonian raising two boys,_ she mused. _Mother would not be happy_. But she would have loved them anyway, and she would have trained them to be as fierce as any of her sisters. “Diana?” Jason had stopped further ahead, down steep steps and was looking back up at her. She looked around and when she confirmed they were alone, jumped up and swooped down to be by his side. “Hey, no fair. You can’t fly around here!”

Diana chuckled. “I thought this was your punishment, not mine?”

Jason rolled his eyes at her. “Seriously though. Why are you doing this?”

Diana wrapped her arm around Jason’s shoulders, pulling his wide breadth into her side. “Because you are a fine young man, Jason and I think that one day, when I see who you have become, I’d like to say I contributed to that.”

Jason flushed and ducked his head, to avoid looking at her. He took a moment, but when he finally did look back up, he had a smile on his face. “Thanks, Diana. That… that really means a lot.” He paused and considered something. “You know, you’ve already trained me. You’re one of my mentors, and I only know how to use a lasso because of you.”

“I hope I can do more than teach you to lasso.” 

“Well introduce me to my namesake, and you’ll become my favourite person in the world.” 

 _No, I won_ _’t_ , she thought with a touch of sadness. Because that position was firmly held in place for Bruce, and she could see it in his eyes. It always would.

They got off the easy trail later as the late afternoon sun made its descent into the horizon and began a rock climb. Diana didn’t find it at all difficult, but she noticed Jason was slowing as he climbed, continually stopping to take deep breaths and rub his side. “Are you alright, little one?”

Jason looked up from below her, helmet strapped to his head and holding onto his rope with all his might. “Yeah, just… Bruce and I stopped for a chilli dog on the way to your office, and I’m regretting it.”

“Pace yourself,” she said. “The place I wish to stop is not so far from the top.”

Jason nodded, looking decidedly uncomfortable but sucked in a sharp breath and continued. Up the top of the mountain, Diana held her hand out from the top and Jason took it. She lifted him up easily, holding him under his arm. Jason grimaced when she put him down but said he was fine and followed Diana more quietly through the trees.

Up the top of the cliffs, the trail wasn’t so clear, but Diana had done the climb before and knew they were going. The Blue Valley hike was one of her favourites in all the Americas because…

“Whoa,” Jason whispered as they made it into the clearing.

Blue Valley had its own waterfall that fell into the pits of the canyon that was far off the easy trail. But the more difficult path which they took, led up to the overhang and all of Blue Valley laid bare before it, from the canyons to the town. “This is amazing,” Jason whispered, staring out across the horizon.

Diana smiled, glad he approved and nodded her head to the edge of the river. “We’ll make camp here for now, and in the morning, we shall go further down into the valley, and hopefully make camp at the bottom of the waterfall by nightfall.”

Warily, Jason glanced over the edge and to the very bottom. “ _Or_ you could fly us down, we could hang out in the lake below and swim all day, and then you could fly us back to the plane.”

Diana smirked. “Now that sounds like fun. Bruce was very clear that this weekend was supposed to entail no fun whatsoever.”

“What B doesn’t know, won’t kill him,” Jason sang.

Diana rolled her eyes at him and nodded to the clearing. “Come on. Let’s set up the tents.”

“That didn’t sound like a no, you know.”

“Set up the tents, Jason. We can discuss it in the morning.”

Jason laughed, still rubbing his stomach. Despite Diana’s orders, they set up the tents together, and Jason went and collected firewood. He walked, occasionally, dangerously close to the edge of the cliff, peering over the precipice, but Diana was always ready to catch him if he fell.

 _I would like this,_ Diana thought, staring at Jason trying to carry more firewood than what they would need in his arms. _To be a mother._

“Jason, move with the speed of Hermes, please. I would like to eat some time tonight.”

Jason came back and carefully placed all the wood in a pile, then sat down on the log they’d decided to pitch their tents nearby. “Can you light a fire?” Diana asked. From his back pocket, Jason withdrew a lighter. “Bruce told me you quit smoking,” Diana scolded him.

Jason grinned charmingly. “What B doesn’t know…”

“Ja _son_.”

He laughed and shook his head. “I quit ages ago. But I’ve carried a lighter in my pocket since I was ten, and old habits die hard.”

“Well, now you’re going to light the fire, without the lighter.” Diana held her hand out, and after a minute of hesitating, he handed it to her. It was a transparent yellow lighter, in a very familiar shape. “Is this a Batman lighter?”

“Yes, and they don’t make them anymore so if I could have it back when we’re done…?” He smirked when Diana shook her head in astonishment, but she pocketed the lighter agreed.

Jason took two sticks and made what looked like a kindling nest from some nearby dried leaves. Diana was impressed when, in only a few minutes, he had smoke and, a few minutes more, fire. “Is there a skill Batman doesn’t teach?”

Jason went quiet momentarily, eyes drifting out of focus. “Actually, I learnt that when I was five and my mom locked me out of the house.”

Whatever she had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. “What?”

Jason cleared his throat a little, voice hardening and deepening as he put on a front of confidence. “I might have been six, actually. Not sure. But my mom was high one night, and I think my Dad was in jail. Mom gave me five dollars and sent me to the corner store to get her some cigarettes. I didn’t really know how money worked and didn’t know they were going to cost more, and she was out of her mind wasted, so didn’t realise what she’d done.

“I tried to buy the cigarettes and the guy told me I didn’t have enough. I kept telling him it was all my mom gave me, but I was clearly a minor and he told me to get lost eventually.

“When I got back home, I told mom what the guy said, but she got mad at me. She locked me out and I… I don’t really remember how I ended up in the park, but I was hungry and I knew there was an apple tree somewhere there. It was freezing, and I bumped into this kid who lived in the apartment across from me. Tommy. He was a bit older than me, and his mom used to kick him out when she had John’s over. He showed me how to light a fire to get warm and let me sleep in his tent.”

By the end of his story, he had a proper flame in the kindling, and he picked it up around the edges and threw it into the wood pile. It lit up, and Jason smiled sadly, poking at the flames with a stick. “Tada,” he said, pointing to the fire.

Diana ignored his theatrics and reached out and cupped his cheek in one hand. “I am sorry that happened to you, Jason.”

“It was a long time ago,” he murmured, pulling away. Diana let her hand fall and held herself up with one arm. “I’ve got B now and… And Dick, and Babs, and Alfie.” He stared at the fire and shook his head. “I don’t need a mom.”

They sat in the quiet for a while. Bruce had always been more protective of Jason than he had been of Dick. Where Dick had been independent and encouraged to lead his own team with the Titans, Jason had been safeguarded at home and rarely did missions without Bruce. She had thought maybe it was Bruce, reacting to Dick leaving his home for eight months, but she had never considered it might have been because the kind of independence Dick craved was Jason’s worst nightmare. He’d been independent his whole life, and what he needed was to know someone had him no matter what, and that was exactly what Bruce provided.

“Oh, I found something else while I was getting sticks,” Jason said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out wild blue flowers. “ _Polemonium eximium_. They’re locally known as skypilots.” He held out the flowers to Diana, a wide smile on his face. “I thought that they’d be good for the pilot of the invisible jet.”

Diana knew he was trying to change the subject, and trying to distract from what he’d just confessed, but she took the flowers gratefully but plucked one from the bunch and tucked the stem behind Jason’s ear. The blue was beautifully bright. The same shade as his eyes. “It looks very pretty on you,” she said.

Jason rolled his eyes but fixed the flowers up behind his ear. It was something he would no doubt never do in front of his brother, or his friends, but for Diana, he just smiled and wore the flowers in his hair. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you, little one,” Diana smiled, touching the delicate petals and smiled.

She didn’t want to push Jason’s feelings aside, and she wondered if she were being too presumptuous to tell him her own tale. In the end, she decided to explain it to him.

Because Hippolyta hadn’t been the easiest of mother’s to have.

As the Queen of all the Amazons, she had to lead as well as parent, and it was a terribly hard balancing act. Diana had been raised, mostly by her aunts and mentors. Every week or so, Hippolyta would ask where Diana was up to in her training. When Diana tried to be a princess, she had been disappointed that Diana had wanted to lead their people into a Battle for Man. But that had led to something worse…

“I was banished from Themyscira for ten years,” Diana said quietly, eyes darkening as she remembered, still playing with the petals. Jason looked surprised by her confession as she caught his eye again and smiled. “It is not quite the same as your story, but… Hades had imprisoned everyone on the island in stone. I had been in Chicago, getting my degree in psychiatry, and when I heard and went back to Themyscira, I barely made it out with my life. The Justice League was still new, and I was the only woman. I needed help, but the laws of Themyscira prevent men from ever stepping foot on the island, but there would have been no island if I did not let Barry, Hal, Clark and your father come to my rescue. Together we threw Hades back into the pits of the Underworld, and we saved my people.

“When the island was safe, and my mother was freed, the boys were all adorned with gifts for rescuing the Queen and saving Themyscira. But I was banished from the island. The Princess, banished for breaking the most sacred rule of all – no men were to step foot on the Themysciran shores.”

Jason stared at her, wide-eyed and slacked jawed. “That’s… that’s screwed up. You saved them.”

“Yes, but as the Queen, had my mother pardoned me, she may have lost her title. She could not show herself above the law, much less her daughter.” Diana held his cheek again, and this time he didn’t push her away. “I know our stories aren’t quite the same. I was an adult, and you were a child. I was let back in, and you left for Wayne Manor. But I am trying to tell you, I understand how frightening it can be to be locked out and when I say I am sorry that happened to you, it is because I know those feelings and you of all people, did not deserve them.”

Jason leant into her hand and shut his eyes momentarily. When he reopened, them, he whispered, “I miss her so much. Sometimes I walk by our old apartment building, and I think, if I go inside she’ll just be there.”

“Bruce told me your mother died from an illness, but I’m assuming that was not the case.”

After a long minute, Jason shook his head. “No… I… I found her. In the bathroom. She overdosed. I… I still don’t know if she meant to, or not.”

Diana hummed. “She means the world to you still.”

“She doesn’t,” Jason disagreed, and Diana oddly believed him. “I… Catherine was my mother, but she wasn’t a mom. I realise that now.”

“How?” Diana asked. Jason’s cheeks flushed under her touch, but he still didn’t move his head, so she spread out her fingers and stroked his soft cheek. “You don’t have to tell me, little one. I’m simply curious.”

Jason shrugged. “Bruce tells me some of the stuff Catherine and Willis did wasn’t normal parent stuff. Alfred gets these disapproving looks on his face if I mention something that was off and…” He looked sadly into the fire he had built for them. “You have to promise to never tell Bruce.”

“Whatever is said, it’s just between the two of us,” Diana promised.

“Selina,” he said.

Diana frowned a bit but then remembered Selina Kyle, the Catwoman. She and Bruce had been quite serious when Jason first arrived in Wayne Manor, and she remembered seeing them on the news together as Robin and Catwoman. “You considered her a mother?”

“I did… until she left.” Jason finally pulled away from her grip, only to wrap his arms around his legs and curl up into a ball. “She didn’t bake cookies or do that kind of mom stuff but… But we used to talk all the time about… _everything_. Movies, stuff that was going on at school, friends, girls… Selina could talk to me for hours and, sometimes she could translate for me. Like, her and I spoke the same language because we both were from Crime Alley, but she’d spent enough time with Bruce to know his language, and she cut out all the bullshit and told him exactly what I was thinking, even when I didn’t really know it myself.

“She sat up with me when I was sick, and she would drag me out shopping with her and get me a hot dog, and fries in a sundae as a reward.” Diana grimaced. It sounded disgusting, but Jason’s face was filled with so much joy. “I miss her more than I miss Catherine. I can forget about Catherine when I’m busy with other things, but I miss Selina every single day.”

“Have you heard from her since she departed Gotham?”

Jason shook his head. “She hasn’t been back for three years. It’s crazy. She’s been gone longer than I knew her and it still hurts.”

Diana never knew Selina very well, outside of what Bruce told her and the few occasions she met her as Catwoman. But Jason was attached to her, and she wondered if she had the same sort of attachment to him.

Unable to speak for her, Diana leant into her bag and pulled out sausages and a loaf of bread. “I cannot get you fries in a sundae, but maybe this will do for dinner.” Diana smiled, and Jason smiled back at her, though it wouldn’t reach his eyes. “I do not expect to try and replace Selina, or Catherine for you, but if you need to talk Jason, I will try and understand. I care about you and your brother deeply, and I would like to think we are like family.”

Jason chuckled and nodded. “We are, Aunt Diana. Dick and I like you more than Bruce most of the time.”

“Good,” she said, and she finally let him change the subject back to whatever he wanted, not wanting to push him too far.

They cooked their hot dogs over the open fire, though she did notice that Jason didn’t eat more than a bite and kept rubbing his side as if it annoyed him. He chugged down a bottle of water and paled later in the evening after the fire was low and Diana reached out and pressed her hand to his forehead on instinct. He was warm, his cheeks flushed pink. “Jason, are you all right? You have been showing signs of illness all day.”

Jason shook his head a little. “I have cramps in my gut. I really think that chilli dog I ate today had gone bad. I wasn’t even that hungry, to begin with, but I think Bruce thought he was cheering me up. I hope B isn’t feeling like this.”

“Are you going to throw up?”

“… Maybe,” he confessed.

Diana looked around the camp and back to Jason. “What if I fly you back to the plane now, and then come back for out things?”

Jason shook his head. “No, it’s not that bad. I’m just… nauseous.”

Diana didn’t feel right about staying, but Jason was insistent. “I’ll sleep whatever it is off. If it’s not gone by morning, we can go. I’m really having a good time, Aunt Diana. I don’t want to leave.”

It was the Aunt Diana that squeezed at her heart and she relented to do it his way. She helped him to his tent because he looked as if a strong breeze would throw him off his feet, and paused outside the flaps. “Yell if you get worse,” she said. She kissed his forehead, and he softened at the touch and hugged her. Diana smiled and hugged him back.

“You’re the best,” he whispered in her hair.

And that warmth she had been feeling all day spending time with Jason, spread into the space in her heart where she was craving something and glowed.

* * *

Diana was woken by someone crying out her name. She sat up and took in her surroundings. She was in her tent, and she had taken Jason out to Blue Valley. “Diana!” another shout. Diana flew out of her sleeping bag and straight into Jason’s tent.

It smelt foul, and she knew why immediately when she saw the vomit on the floor. Jason was flushed red, curled up clutching his stomach and crying silently. “By the Grace of Athena, Jason.” She knelt beside him, away from the mess and laid her hands over his shoulder. “What hurts?”

“Everything,” he groaned. “It got better but… but now it hurts everywhere.”

Diana felt his cheek, and he was burning up. “Okay, little one. Hold on to me. I’m going to get you help.”

She bundled him up, and he wrapped his arms around her neck. “I think I might be really sick,” he complained.

Diana couldn’t help but chuckle. “I think you might be too.”

She took off into the sky, ripping a hole through the tent and flew straight into Blue Valley. Jason was a small shivering wreck in her arms, and she was flying as fast as she could. “I’m gonna…” he tried to warn her, but it was too late. Jason threw up into his own lap. He couldn’t stop himself, though Diana could tell he was trying.

“It’s okay,” Diana said to him. She didn’t care about the vomit, that sunk into her shirt. She had been covered in worse, and she was worried about getting Jason help.

Diana flew as fast as she could into the town. It had been years since she’d visited Blue Valley and she couldn’t remember where the hospital was. She did a lap of the perimeter from high above before she spotted the giant H for the helicopter pad above the hospital.

She flew down, angling herself towards the emergency and burst in through the doors, only landing when she was in front of the nurses’ station. “I need help!” she shouted.

The nurses and doctors stared at her in stunned silence. She wasn’t in her costume, and she’d gone to sleep in a tracksuit and sleep shirt, so they had no idea who she was. But Diana glared at all of them, her nerves on edge. “Now!” Her voice boomed around the room, kicking everyone into gear and moved frantically around her, pushing a gurney towards her.

She followed him every step of the way as the doctors moved him from room to room to examine Jason. They asked various questions to him and to Diana, some of which she knew the answer to but some that were based on his familial history.

“Substance abuse,” Jason groaned. “A lot of substance abuse, and addiction. Dad had high blood pressure. Grandma, diabetes… She’s still alive. Somewhere… Was born addicted to heroin.” He was listing it off like a checklist, and Diana’s heart ached for him.

“His name is Jason Wayne, son of Bruce Wayne. Whatever the cost, make sure he has the best care,” she said.

They all froze and looked down at the boy in front of them, then doubled their efforts. At some point and Jason, reached his hand out to her from the bed. She grabbed it and squeezed his fingers as the doctors inserted IV’s into him, took blood tests, and scans.

“He has a burst appendix,” one of the doctors said. “We need to move him into surgery right away.”

“Burst…?” Jason trailed off as his face tinged green.

“He is about to–” Diana started, but for the second time it was no use. Jason threw up for the third time, and the doctors helped him tilt to his side, so he didn’t suffocate. At the same time, some nurses began to pull up the sides of his bed and wheel him out of the room at an alarming pace, and their hands were torn apart.

“Where are you taking him?” Diana asked, standing in front of the bed. She was frantic, and things were happening so fast they barely made sense. “What’s going on?”

The same doctor who diagnosed Jason spoke to her. “We need to get the appendix out and clean up as much of the area as we can. Right now, deadly toxins are moving into his muscle and bloodstream, and if we don’t hurry, he will become septic and die.”

Jason was listening to every word, and his eyes widened in alarm. He looked up at Diana, tears in his big blue eyes. “Call Dick,” Jason croaked. “Please… I’ve got to talk to him.”

Diana was in such a state of shock, she stepped away from the bed and let them wheel Jason out. She followed them, but she didn’t try to stop them again. “Diana,” Jason cried out. “Diana, please. Please call Dick!”

Diana jogged up beside him and squeezed his hand. “I will, little one.”

“Tell him I’m really sorry. Tell him, please…”

“You can tell him when you wake up,” Diana replied. She looked up ahead and saw the door where she could no longer follow him. “Be brave, little one. You will be fine.”

Jason nodded, not tearing his eyes away from her. He reached out his hand again, and Diana could only take it for a second before they were pulled apart by the doors. A nurse stepped in front of her and held out her hand. “You need to wait here,” she said.

Diana stopped and stared at the bed as it rolled away and Jason’s hand fell limp on the side. “Let me take you to the waiting room,” the nurse said.

Diana let herself be lead into a small room, but when she got there, she walked to the payphones. A long time ago, Bruce had set up a secret phone number that made all phones untraceable and all pay phones free. He had made them memorise the number, appearing out of nowhere for weeks and demanding they recite it. Only when they successfully had, it recounted four times did Bruce let them go.

Now she was thankful for his efforts because her phone was halfway up the mountain and she dialled the number, bringing up the Batcomputer’s voice. “Identify yourself,” the computer said.

She looked over her shoulder and twisted around, lowering her voice. “Wonder Woman, designation-zero-three.”

The computer approved of her identity, and she sighed, pressing her forehead against the cool metal of the phone booth. “Who do you wish to contact?”

“Nightwing. Designation B-zero-one.” The phone rang and rang, and Diana almost lost hope that he’d answer until a weary sleep addled voice did pick up.

“‘Lo?”

“Dick? It’s Diana.”

“Oh, hey.” He instantly sounded more awake, clearing his throat. She could hear him moving. “How’s it going? Want to kill Jason yet?”

“Jason’s sick,” she said. “Very sick… his appendix burst, and I think we may have realised too late.”

There was silence on the other end, and Dick’s breaths came quicker through the phone. “Where are you?”

“Blue Valley hospital. He’s in surgery now–”

“I’ll be there… Shit. Conner took the jet. I’ll be there soon.”

“Can you go to the top of the canyon hiking trail before you come. We left our things.”

“Okay.”

“And I don’t know Alfred’s number.”

“He’s at the Watchtower. He knows more about the Wayne family, in any dimension than anyone. They need him for the mission. No, I’ll come and I’ll… I’ll call Babs. She can grab his family history from Bruce’s office. I’ll be there soon.”

He hung up on her and Diana sighed and shut the phone.

Diana knew there were times that she had to be patient, but she didn’t always enjoy them. She walked away from the phone booth and sat down. She looked down at herself. Most of Jason’s vomit had hit him, but there were flecks of it on her shirt.

She should have known. He was tired and had a low-grade fever, and of course, his cramps were bad… He was Bruce Wayne’s son. If he were showing any signs of discomfort, that would have meant he was in great pain. She’d seen Bruce walk on a broken leg before.

Diana knew enough about burst appendixes to know that it was dangerous. If the toxins got through enough of his body, he could have organ failure, or there could be permanent damage. She had a patient with PTSD related to septic shock.

The worst part was that it was completely preventable. If she’d taken his pain more seriously, she could have taken him straight to the hospital. But she had ignored that because she wanted him to have a good time.

 _Bruce is going to kill me_. She leant on her fist and stared at the doors the doctors disappeared down. The waiting was terrible. An hour felt like a day, and she wondered if this was what Bruce went through any time one of the boys were injured. She supposed that parenting wasn’t just taking sad young boys on hikes. There were illnesses and heartbreaks, and _groundings_. There was panic and anguish and constant worry.

Dawn was breaking when the doctor came out taking off his gloves, and Jason was being wheeled out, blankets wrapped around him and an oxygen mask on his face. Diana stood up and went to him. “Is he alright?”

“How are you related?” The doctor asked. Diana read _Ramirez_ on his scrubs.

Diana rolled her eyes. “He’s my nephew. I’m looking after him for the weekend while his father is on a business trip.”

 “Why didn’t you bring him in sooner? His appendix burst hours ago?”

Diana glared at him. “I don’t need a lecture right now, Doctor Ramirez, I need to know if Jason is okay.”

The Doctor didn’t look pleased. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared down his nose at her, and she called upon Athena to stop herself from striking him. “We removed what was left of the appendix, and any damaged tissue. He has sepsis, but it’s in its early stages. We’ve inserted an IV of strong antibiotics, and he’s young and strong enough that he may have a full recovery. But the next twenty-four hours are crucial. If you can get in contact with his father, he should come right away.”

As Diana sat on the side of Jason’s bed, in his private room, holding his hand, she considered calling the League for the hundredth time.

When a message had come through from The Justice Underground, that Thomas Wayne Jnr had created a machine that could bring an army through, Bruce had revealed a device he had built that could cross over one man per charge. He’d been annoyed that Thomas had come up with a machine that could transport an entire army, but Edward Nashton assured them that Thomas hadn’t found the power source for his device yet.

The power source of Bruce’s machine was kinetic energy and Barry and Wally had gotten together and kept running for two days straight to get two charges up that could send Bruce and Clark to Earth-3. The speedsters had taken Friday to relax while Clark and Bruce left, and they were going to start running to power it up for them to return on Monday.

She could call the League and get them to get in contact with Bruce, but she knew him, and she knew he wouldn’t leave Clark alone. That would mean he would be left worrying for two days, unable to do anything about it. _I’ll call him when I know for sure,_ Diana decided. Hopefully, by then Barry and Wally would have run up at least one other charge, so if it was bad, they could bring him across.

With her mind made up, Diana waited on the edge of Jason’s bed to make sure that, when he opened his eyes, hers was the first face he saw and not any of the nurses or doctors. She held his hand and rubbing the soft skin on the back of it. He was almost a fully-grown man, but under the anaesthetic, he looked more like the little boy who had timidly asked her at the age of twelve if she could show him how to use a lasso.

A few hours passed, and Jason groaned.

“Jason?” Diana whispered, leaning in expectantly.

“…‘na,” he muttered back in reply and Diana tilted her head to the side, not quite sure what he was trying to say. He fell quiet again, and Diana looked at the IV bag of fluid that was depleting. A nurse who had been checking up on Jason said his anaesthetic would be wearing off and he may rouse himself, but to make sure he kept the oxygen mask firmly on his face.

She squeezed his hand. “Little one, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

Jason groaned again. “S…” His eyes fluttered as if he was trying to wake up. “S’li…” His fingers squeezed Diana’s back, as she realised what he wanted.

She glanced at the phone and knew Bruce would not approve of what she was about to do.

* * *

When Dick arrived, bags strapped to his back and his hair all over the place, the sun had risen, and Diana had moved from the bed to the chair and was leaning on her hand to stop herself from collapsing.

He dumped all the things he’d gone and collected from the campsite on the floor and walked up behind her, resting a hand on her shoulder and looking over Jason. “What happened?” he asked.

“His appendix burst, and he didn’t tell me,” Diana sighed. “By the time the pain got too much for him, sepsis had started to sink in. The doctors have him on some strong painkillers and antibiotics, and he needs the oxygen mask until the toxins run clear. He’s young and strong, and I have every faith the Gods will be kind to him.”

Dick went and sat on the edge of the bed, where Diana had been most of the night before and took Jason’s hand, squeezing it. “Can he hear me?” Dick whispered.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “He squeezed my hand earlier.”

Dick swallowed and rubbed the back of Jason’s hand. “Hey, Little Wing,” he whispered. “I’m here, okay? Barb’s on her way. She hopped on a plane an hour ago, and Alfie told me to make sure you’re okay. He’d come, but he’s looking after B right now.”

Diana got up from her chair slowly, her limbs stiff from sitting in one position for so long and she rested her hand on Dick’s back. “I’m going to go find his doctor and get an update. Maybe get changed too… Jason vomited on me, and it’s starting to smell.”

“You don’t have to stay. I can look after it from here.” Dick put on a mask like Bruce did when he was trying to remain distant from something. “I’m Jason’s guardian when Bruce and Alfred aren’t around.”

But Diana wasn’t having it. “I will not leave. Not until Bruce is here. But I will get us breakfast, and maybe some coffee?”

The mask slipped. Dick wasn’t as good at holding it up as Bruce was and he was grateful beneath the stoic guise. “Thank you. Black. No sugar.”

“Just like Bruce,” she said, collecting her bag.

She went to the closest bathrooms first and, washed her face and the back of her neck. The night had been long, and she needed to have the energy for an even longer day ahead. She changed her shirt and pants and tied her hair up in a high bun.

Once she was ready, she went to look in her bag for her laundry bag. It must have shifted down below her other things, or she couldn’t remember which pocket she put it in, but when she unzipped the hiking bag even more so, the book she’d taken off the shelf to give to Jason fell out.

It was a leather-bound book that contained lost Greek plays that the Amazonians had kept hidden away. She’d had translated into English, but they sat side by side on the page with the original Ancient Greek. She’d initially had it made as a gift for Bruce, who had taken an interest in Greek arts because of her, but she had never given it to him because they never had the time to meet up and then, their relationship dissolved.

She had no great attachment to the book, and she realised that the gift belonged with Jason, who loved the tales more than Bruce ever could.

Dressed in cleaner clothes, Diana went to the cafeteria and bought sandwiches and coffees and returned to the room, but paused when she saw Dick squeezing Jason’s hand. “Come on, Little Wing. Open your eyes for me.”

The beeping of his machines kept playing through the room and Jason remained still in the bed. “Please, Jay. Please, I just need to see you open your eyes, baby bird… I’m sorry for what happened at the gala. I’m sorry we fought, and I’m sorry I left before we made up. I’ll never do it again. Just please open your eyes.”

Unable to watch Dick’s heartbreak any more, Diana walked up behind Dick and hugged him. He clutched Diana’s arm to his chest, and let out a small choked sob. “Shouldn’t he be awake by now?”

It was worrying, but Diana had faith. “He’s a warrior,” Diana murmured. “He will wake up.”

“I know what the mortality rates of Sepsis are. One third don’t make it, and seven-out-of-ten survivors live with permanent damage. What if this is permanent?”

“You know your brother. He is a survivor.” Diana hugged Dick tighter, and he held her there, not wanting her to move.

“Thanks, Diana… if you hadn’t been with him… I mean, I can’t actually fly,” he said, tears clogging his throat. He cleared them out, his voice becoming hard again. “I can’t lose him.”

“You won’t, little one,” Diana said. “I promise, you won’t.”

* * *

Barbara arrived late in the afternoon and, despite Diana having heard the two were dating separate people, she threw herself into Dick’s arms and clung to him as he did the same in return. She only came up to his shoulder, her red hair pouring down her back, and she reached up and knotted her hand in his hair, rubbing her thumb along his scalp.

“He’s going to be okay, Dickiebird. I hacked the hospital records on the plane. It’s not as bad as they originally thought. People – _we_ have gotten through worse.”

Dick just held Barbara back, burying his face into her neck, his shoulders shaking. “I told him I hate him,” Dick cried. “I don’t hate him, Babs. I don’t.”

“I know. He knows that too.”

Diana was just a passer-by as Dick and Barbara whispered about their brother’s condition. Neither of them paid her any mind, as Barbara moved to Jason’s side and touched the small part of his cheek that was exposed. The oxygen mask had been on for twenty-four hours, trying desperately to pump clean air into his lungs. The toxins in his bloodstream were reacting to the antibiotics but not as fast as the doctors had hoped, and the oxygen was because he was only absorbing half of what he needed.

But it had been on his face for a few hours short of a whole day, and his face was swollen around his cheeks where the seal of his mask sucked at his skin. Barbara lightly touched the sensitive skin and grimaced. “Does Bruce know?” Barbara asked finally.

Dick blinked a little childishly and looked over at Diana. “I… I didn’t think…”

“There’s not enough charge to bring him back in the machine yet,” Diana told them. “When there is, I will check on how Jason is doing. If he hasn’t improved, I will contact Bruce. Otherwise, there is no sense in worrying him when he’s too far away to do anything.”

“Hi Diana,” Barbara said, her cheeks flushed.

“Barbara,” Diana smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”

Dick flushed too, but for different reasons. “I told Bruce I couldn’t look after him this weekend. I said I wanted a weekend free from the brat.” He looked like Jason did right before he was going to be sick, and Diana was about to tell him to calm, but Barbara cupped his face between her hands and rubbed his cheeks.

“It’s not your fault.” It was because she said it that it finally sunk in through Dick’s skull and lodged itself in his brain.

Diana deflated just the slightest bit as she felt just a little less needed.

* * *

It was three in the morning on Sunday and while Dick and Barbara had come and go in shifts all day, but Diana had stayed where she was in the chair by Jason’s side. She’d received word from Barry about an hour ago that the first charge was up on the machine and asked if he should call Bruce.

But the doctors had taken Jason off the oxygen for the time being, and he was breathing on his own efficiently enough that they thought the worst of it was over. He still hadn’t woken up completely, other than muttering incoherent phrases.

Diana sent Dick and Barbara to a local hotel earlier on, insisting they couldn’t spend the night sharing a chair as they had done all day and telling them that as an Amazonian she needed little to no sleep.

It wasn’t true, but they were both too exhausted to figure out her lie.

She had drifted off at some point after they left, but when she’d woken up again, she decided to get the book out and opened it up to the first play – one about Poseidon, Athena and Medusa, written by Helena of Corinth.

She read to him, even as her voice grew hoarse, holding the book on her lap with one hand and her head in her palm with the other. “He likes stories about the Gods.”

Diana jumped.

As silent as the night, Selina Kyle slipped up to Diana’s side, arms crossed over her chest as she stared at Jason. “I mean… he likes stories about your family.” She smirked down at Diana, the light shining her in green eyes mischievously as Diana calmed her racing heart.

“You got my message.”

“It was hard to avoid. You left it on every single one of my cell phones.” She sounded annoyed, but her eyes flittered back to Jason, eyeing the machines. “How’s he doing?”

“Better,” Diana admitted. “Sorry if I worried you, but he kept saying your name. Bruce is off-world, and if he woke up, I didn’t want him to be frightened.”

Selina hummed, not giving too much away but she took the file from the end of the bed and began to flick through it, too quickly to gather in-depth information, but slow enough that she knew what was going on.

Diana had never formally met Selina Kyle. She’d met Catwoman on more than one occasion, having stopped her in various robberies a few times, and she’d bumped into Selina and Bruce when they were on a date in Gateway once. She didn’t seem the type who existed in the daylight, but she had a hold on Jason that Bruce had never made her privy to.

“Jason said you haven’t been in contact for years.”

“Been travelling,” she replied dismissively. She put the files down and walked around to the other side of the bed and put her bag down.

Diana noted it was a backpack, leather, with a helmet strapped to the side. Her clothes were made for frequent travel – worn jeans, a fitted but comfortable long sleeve. Wherever she’d been, she had been ready to leave in a hurry.

She fixed Jason with a gaze as she sat down beside him, and cupped both his cheeks in her palms like Barbara had done with Dick. Only, this was less demanding and more intimate and nurturing. “Jay,” she whispered. “Jaybird…”

Diana was about to tell her it was no use, and that he hadn’t been able to wake up since his surgery, but by some miracle his eyes did open, and they hazily found Selina’s face. A smile pushed its way over his mouth, and he reached out his arm, but it fell short. “Selina,” he rasped. His heart rate picked up a little, and he made a noise in the back of his throat. “Hurts… everything…”

“I know, baby bird,” Selina whispered. She shifted her body around with graceful ease and sat up on the bed. Jason moved into her, laying his head on her chest as she curled around him, tucking her legs beneath her. “I’m not going anywhere.” She rested her cheek in his hair, and he loosely slung his arm over her thighs.

He was asleep again, but he looked more comfortable than he had in hours, even though his body was more contorted. Selina touched the swelling of his cheeks and shot her eyebrow up questioningly at Diana.

“Oxygen mask,” she replied.

Selina nodded understandingly. Her jaw was twitching, but she wasn’t making a sound and Diana had a feeling she knew what the Cat wanted to ask her, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Diana may have called her, but she shouldn’t have had to. Selina should have been there for the boy she so clearly adored.

It was an hour before she even spoke. “So, you and Bruce?”

Diana rolled her eyes. “No. Bruce is off-world, Jason is grounded. I said he could stay with me.”

Selina wilted with relief and kept playing with the ends of Jason’s hair. Diana eyed Selina warily, wondering if she’d cut and leave before Jason even woke up, but she was looking at his face so intently that with each passing second, she thought that less and less. “How’d you get my number?” Selina asked.

Diana smiled because she knew Selina knew. The woman wasn’t dumb. “The League has very extensive records.”

Or at least, Bruce did. Even after three years, Bruce kept a close eye on Selina. Not because he thought she would go rogue, but because he got worried when she didn’t check in. “Thank you,” Selina whispered, holding Jason steady and not looking away from his face. “I’m glad you called me.”

* * *

The worst of it was over, and Jason was moved from the ICU into another suite with a couch and a table. Sunday had been quiet, with Dick and Barbara returning holding each other’s hand and Dick greeting Selina with smiles and Barbara saying hello with a wary look. Diana was spoken to even less as Selina centred all the conversations with Dick and Barbara and didn’t let up from Jason’s side. When Diana had fallen asleep at some point, she’d woken to a blanket over her shoulders, but Selina’s voice was quietly reading her plays out loud to the boy curled up in her arms with a soothing ease and not a hint of embarrassment.

He’d woken up sometime in the afternoon for a little bit, and Dick rushed at the chance to speak with him, and Barbara gently coaxed him to drink water, while Selina stroked his head. As he was being well taken care of, Diana went and spoke to the doctors who told her the sepsis had been, gratefully, a mild case and he would need to stay in their care for the next week, but he was through the absolute worst of it. “We’ll know his full cognitive and physical ability when he’s more alert,” Ramirez said. “He was lucky.”

Diana was sick of having him scold her, but thanked him anyway and went back in.

She paused in the doorway as an exhausted Jason stared at Dick, blinking wearily and smiled as he said something humorous. Barbara leant across the bed and whacked Dick in the arm for being rude, but she was laughing too, and Selina grinned from ear to ear and egged Dick on.

Jason turned his head to lean on Selina, but he spotted her in the doorway, and his face lit up just the slightest bit. “Diana?” he whispered, his voice scratchy at best.

She stepped in closer and took his outstretched hand as he offered it. “Hello, little one.” The smile on Selina’s face tensed as she touched him, but she allowed it. Diana wanted her to dare try.

“Sorry for ruining the weekend,” he said, a smile flickering on his face. “But if… if it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t fun at all. So no promises to Bruce were broken.”

Diana laughed softly and squeezed his hand. “Next time you want to follow your father’s strict orders, maybe we’ll just take the hike. Having your appendix burst on my watch is far too extreme.”

Jason grinned, his eyes shutting despite himself. “Yeah, but at least it was unforgettable.”

“That it was, little one. Maybe we can finish that walk sometime soon.”

“I’d like that,” he yawned. “I want… I want to swim in that lake at the bottom… bottom of the… water…” He fell asleep again against Selina.

Diana smiled and tucked his arm back against him, stretching over Selina who was focusing on Jason intently as not to look at her. _She’s jealous,_ Diana thought. _Jason called for her, but she’s jealous of me._ It made her feel a bit smug because, truthfully, she had been jealous of her when she’d heard Jason call her name.

 _We’re the same, you and I,_ she wanted to say. _Unable to be with the man, but head over heels for his children._ The idea gave Diana comfort, but she knew it would burn Selina if she ever said it out loud.

* * *

Jason’s new room had a couch, and though Selina and Diana both told Dick and Barbara to go back to the hotel, they insisted on staying in the room. Something had changed between the two of them, Diana noticed. They were unable to go through more than five minutes without touching and even when they weren’t touching, they moved together like orbiting planets.

When they finally went to sleep, they slept on the couch, Barbara on the edge and Dick curled up behind her, holding her back against his chest. They were both watching the door, but they were both fast asleep.

Selina was also asleep, curled around Jason still with her cheek rested on his hair.

Diana was awake again, unable to sleep. She instinctually wanted to keep guard and watch over them all, to make sure nothing was going to happen. Learning her lesson from Selina’s arrival, she sat with her back to the wall and her eyes on the door, so when Bruce walked in, ten hours earlier than his time due to arrive from Earth-3, she didn’t startle.

She sat up straighter in her chair, as Bruce looked around and counted heads in the room. He barely looked at Diana, who he clearly knew was there and awake, and grabbed the charts from the end of the bed.

Unlike Selina, he studied every page, reading every diagnosis, blood test and medication dose. Diana stood up and stood by him as his breathing evened out and the information in the charts calmed him down.

He was in dark jeans, a t-shirt and his windbreaker. His undercover outfit. He must have left Earth-3 and run straight to the hospital. She wondered if Clark was back too, or if it was just him, but she decided not to ask.

“Sepsis brought on by appendicitis,” Bruce murmured. Once he’d caught himself up, he put the charts back down and rubbed his face. “Out of all things, I almost lost him to appendicitis.”

Diana rested her hand on his back and squeezed his shoulder. “I am sorry, Bruce. I noticed he was unwell, but I didn’t think–”

“It’s not your fault,” Bruce said evenly, eyes never leaving Jason face, pressed against Selina’s shoulder. “I taught him how to push down pain, but I didn’t think he’d ignore it altogether. He’s stubborn sometimes.”

“Like his father,” she said, but Bruce had no reply. He glanced at Selina and back at Jason, so Diana explained. “He asked for her, and I could not refuse.”

“It’s fine,” he said with an edge to his voice. “He loves her. I’m only sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.” He closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck with his eyes shut in annoyance. “Actually…” he trailed off and rubbed his face. “I shouldn’t even be here now.”

“What do you mean?”

“We shut off the portal,” Bruce said, his voice strained. “We managed to destroy Thomas’ research and his tech, and his power supply. It was a diamond with trapped energies from an infinity beam inside – Barry and I are going to study it later – but Owlman got through to this side of the portal before we got there. We arrived at the Watchtower, and I was going to start tracking him when Alfred told me about Jason. I need to go back and track–”

“You need to stay with your son,” Diana whispered. “This all could have been much worse, so you stay here and be thankful he’s alive. Tomorrow we will deal with Owlman.”

Bruce closed his eyes, calming his mind of racing thoughts, and when he opened his eyes, they curiously fell on Dick. After a long-saddened gaze, directed to his oldest, he turned back to Diana. “Thank you, Diana. For taking care of Jason.”

“I’d like to do it again sometime, but without the vomiting,” she added, smiling as she thought of what Jason had said earlier. “He’s a good boy, Bruce. You are fortunate to have the boys in your life. Stay here and appreciate them.”

Bruce nodded, and Diana kissed his cheek, bidding him farewell silently. She took her bags, leaving the book for Jason to read as he recovered, and his lighter as she had promised, but paused at the doorway and looked over her shoulder.

Bruce took a spare blanket and pillow from the supply closet and gently moved Dick’s head to nestle it underneath both his and Barbara’s heads and covered them. Dick stirred the slightest bit but Bruce hushed him with his fingers in is hair. Once he was asleep again, Bruce went and sat on the other side of the hospital bed, sliding his arm around both Selina and Jason and sat his head on top of them both. He took Jason’s hand on his lap and began to whisper something in his ear. He pulled his hand up to his lips and kissed his knuckles then continued to speak to Jason quietly in his sleep. Diana could have listened if she wanted, but the moment was private, and it was theirs.

She walked out and shut the door feeling momentarily lost and a dull, empty ache in her chest.

The whole League worried about the Batfamily. Some were concerned Bruce overworked the children, and others had their opinions on whether they should be allowed to be raised by Bruce at all. But what she had just witnessed, with Dick, Barbara, Selina, and Bruce all coming to Jason’s aid, was hard to walk away from.

Though none of them were much for saying it aloud, their love for each other was palpable. If anything were to happen to any of them, she wondered if they would be able to survive at all.

She prayed to Athena that nothing ever would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you go. Lois and Diana. Two of the mothers.
> 
> If Selina wasn't my favourite, I would want Bruce to be with Diana. I think she'd be good for him too... as in, he's willing to do shifty things. She isn't.
> 
> Also, hope you all enjoyed Selina's cameo!


	6. Sheila

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sheila wasn't Jason's mother. In the end, she should never have gotten involved with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love and hate this chapter in equal parts.

Sheila wasn’t sure why she had been arrested.

She wasn’t sure how any of it had happened really, the facts distorted in her head in a milky white drug-induced haze.

One minute she had been eighteen years sober, with a fiancé, a house, her dream career and an expert in her field.

The next minute she was cold and alone, evicted from her home, walking through the Gotham rain pawning of the last remnant of her failed engagement with every hospital slamming its doors shut at the sight of her.

All because of the boy.

The door to the interrogation room opened, and Sheila looked up to see the hand of a police officer holding it open to let someone else –  _something else_  through.

“Sheila Haywood.”

The Gotham legends weren’t wrong.

The Batman, even in the harsh light of the Gotham PD interrogation room was a nightmare in a cape.

Everything about him, from his broad shoulders to his clunking boots told Sheila to be afraid of the Dark Knight. To be frightened of the night and all the mystery it held. His figure loomed over her, casting a shadow on her face and his voice was terrifying – too low to be natural and too commanding to be ignored.

He hadn’t asked her name as a question. He wasn’t asking for her to confirm her identity. He didn’t need her to.

He only said her name, so she knew that  _he_  knew something so intimate about her. To imply that he knew  _everything_  about her. Of course, he did. He was Batman, after all.

In his hands, was a manila envelope, and he placed it on the table in front of her. She didn’t touch it, and he didn’t ask her to. “Forty-three. Graduated top of her class while her boyfriend, Willis Todd, dropped out.”

At seventeen, that name had sent shivers up her spine and butterflies erupted in her stomach. Willis Todd was the good-looking bad boy, every girl wanted to be with, and some reason he had picked her. She’d been so happy that she ignored everything her parents warned her about and stayed with him until his name sent her shivers back down the other way, and twisted up her gut. “You dated Willis for seven years until one day; you left him. Why?”

Sheila stared off into the distance, her eyes vacant as she blinked through the memories of Willis Todd, loving her. Holding her. Taking care of her when she was sick.

Then slapping her in the face, when she spoke out of turn.

“He was a violent drug addict,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I was lucky to get away when I did.”

Sheila’s throat ached from screaming. She wasn’t sure how many hours she had sat in that warehouse, screaming for someone to help her. She was safe, the clown had assured her. The bomb that was ticking outside wasn’t ever going to hit her. Maybe the noise would deafen her, but she wouldn’t be dead.

It was all just a game.

A trick to show to a boy.

The boy.

Batman opened the manila folder, and there he was.

Tall and proud, holding a trophy in one hand and beaming at the camera. He was older than the first-time Sheila saw him. In the photo, he looked more like a man, filled out in muscle and size. His eyes sparkled bright blue and weren’t inherited from his father. Neither was his jet-black hair or his straight teeth.

But the confidence he exuded, and the way his smile curled his lips and the strong line of his jaw.

In those ways, he was a perfect replica of Willis Todd.

In the photo, he was seventeen, and the same age as Willis was the day she fell in love with him.

“How do you know Jason Todd?” Batman asked.

Sheila shook her head. “I don’t. Not really.”

Batman leant forward, his face inches from hers. “Try again.”

His breath hit her face, and she flinched, unable to look at him so she chose instead to duck her head and find comfort in the steel interrogation table. “He’s Willis’s son. About seven years ago he tracked me down. Found out I was working at Gotham Private Hospital and showed up during my shift.

“I thought he was a street kid, and he had a cut on his arm that looked like he did it himself to get into the Emergency.” 

Sheila remembered the page that came through that day. Her beeper went off, and she lifted it up from her waist so she could reread it, confused by what it said.

_YOUR SON IS IN EMERGENCY._

“He lied and told the On Duty Nurse that he was my son.”

“Was he?” Batman’s voice was so serious that she had to laugh.

Because Sheila Haywood had never had children.

She’d told Jason that as much on the day. “I should call security,” she said, looking at his scruffy shirt and too-large jeans. She looked at his bloodied arm and made a face. 

It wasn’t that it disgusted her. 

Sheila was the best neurosurgeon on the east coast and had seen far more gruesome than a bloody arm.

What disgusted her was that it was beneath her.

All of it. 

The cut on his arm, the kid with his grubby jeans and annoyed face. 

He was clearly a street kid, judging by his looks and smell, and couldn’t afford Gotham Private, but somehow he’d managed to lie himself through. And an injury like the one he was presenting was an interns job at best. Not something for Doctor Sheila Haywood. But her name was on the board, and she had to check him out, or it could be a negligence lawsuit waiting to happen. “You do that to yourself?”

“It was an accident,” Jason replied, his tiny mouth speaking such serious words.

“Do you want to kill yourself?”

“No.”

“Do you like hurting yourself?”

“No.”

“You traumatised by something?”

“Probably.”

Sheila quirked up her brow, and he matched her stare, mimicking her facial expression. She remembered his two crystal blue eyes daring her to question him. “Kid, I got no idea who you are–”

“I’m your son,” he said, cutting across her.

Sheila laughed. Without a pause to consider, or a moment to figure out if maybe he genuinely did need psych, she tipped her head back and laughed so hard her eyes watered.

However Jason had been expecting her to react, that hadn’t been it. “Oh, that’s a good one,” Sheila sighed, wiping her eyes. But when Jason’s little-malnourished face narrowed into something critical she fell quiet. “Oh shit, you’re serious. Kid, I’ve never even had a cat, let alone a kid.”

Jason frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Trust me. I think I’d remember popping out a human watermelon.” Sheila snorted. “Why the hell would you think I’m your mom?”

In the present, Batman pulled away from her and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why did he think you were his mother?”

Sheila pressed her hands into her eyeballs, trying to shove them deep into her brain. “I don’t know. Kid was smart, but he lived in a delusion. He’d just lost his actual mom, and he’d heard a bit about me, I guess. I think he just hoped I was someone who could make it all better for him.” She stretched out and scratched up her arm, indifferently, remembering the annoyance on Jason’s face as he recounted the tale.

“You used to date my Dad, right? Willis Todd.”

Sheila visibly flinched at the name. She looked the ten-year-old up and down and realised that he did bear a striking resemblance to a certain ex of hers and that the parts in his features that were missing kind of looked like the girl he’d knocked up right after she’d left him for good.

What was her name… Katerina… Katrina… Kathleen…

Catherine.

“I also never had his son,” Sheila said. “Catherine Peterson did.”

Jason’s face fell. He glared down at the cut on his arm as if punishing it for not bringing him what he wanted. “I thought…”

“You thought what? That I’d actually let myself get tied down to a loser like Willis Todd?” Sheila laughed and didn’t really pay attention to the heartbroken look on his face. 

“Delusional,” she said in both past and present. But while Sheila in the past had laughed loudly, present Sheila pulled at the end of her tangled hair and stared blankly ahead of her.

“You maintained a relationship with him for a year,” Batman said.

“No. He maintained a relationship with me for a year,” Sheila scoffed. “The kid just kept showing up.”

It was the sixth-time Sheila had been called down to see her son in the emergency. It had only been four weeks, and she didn’t know why he kept showing up, or how he was paying for the hospital bills or if he was paying for them at all. Maybe his constant return had to do with the fact she gave him a lollipop after his first visit. But she’d also given him a tetanus shot, and the lollipop was standard procedure for those under thirteen.

“You have got to stop doing this,” Sheila said, drawing the curtains around them in the ER. “What is this time? You shoot yourself in the head yet, so maybe I can actually do a brain surgery instead of fancy scut?”

Jason glared at her and held up his t-shirt, showing her a rash he had on his stomach. “I didn’t do this to myself.”

Sheila frowned and inspected the rash. She took out her stethoscope from her pocket, swinging it around her head and laid it against his chest. “You had a fever?”

“Kinda,” he said.

“Breathe deep.”

He did. She moved the stethoscope around and his back and chest, hearing the crackle at each spot. “You exhausted?”

“Always.”

She took a depressor out of a jar on the wall and got him to open his mouth. He made a face but complied. “Yep. It’s measles.”

“Measles?” Jason made a face. “I already got the measles.”

“You sure it wasn’t chicken pox?”

Jason considered what she said and shrugged. “There’s a difference?”

“Willis and Catherine vaccinate you?”

“What do you think?”

Sheila sighed threw out the depressor and checked her watch. She had surgery in half an hour. “Well, you need antibiotics, fluids and bed rest.”

“I can’t afford medicine, I drink out of a river, and I don’t own a bed,” Jason replied evenly. “So what else can I try?”

“Well this place is more expensive than a hotel per night,” Sheila said, clicking her pen and writing a script. “So I don’t know. You’re pretty. Turn tricks to stick around in a motel room? What else do street kids do nowadays?”

Jason coiled back from her like he’d been struck. Sheila raised her eyebrow not quite sure what was wrong with him, but Jason shoved himself off the bed. He grabbed his shoes and pulled them on his feet, one of his toes sticking out of the end. He ripped open the curtains, which was surprisingly hilarious considering how short he was, and turned around and glared at Sheila with his face bright red and angry.

“Fuck you, lady. You think you’re so much better than me? You’re the same bullshit as Willis and Catherine. Just in a fancier outfit.” Jason turned to leave and would have gotten all the way out if Sheila didn’t stop him.

“Kid, wait!” Sheila shouted, chasing him through the ER.

He stopped and turned looking over his shoulder and watched her expectantly.

Sometimes, years later, she wondered what he wanted from her in that second. She couldn’t figure it out. But what he didn’t care about was the Sheila tearing out the prescription. “If you managed to scrape up the cash, get these. Don’t get the cheap brand.”

“Fuck you,” he said, with too much conviction for a ten-year-old. But he took the prescription and stormed out of the hospital, giving the finger to the nurse’s station on the way out.

Sitting in the interrogation room, Sheila was shaking. She was wearing a spaghetti strap tank and shorts, and someone had put the air-conditioning on. She was detoxing still, but she hadn't even been allowed to ask for cigarettes. Batman wasn’t going to let her move though, even after the ordeal she’d been through. “You told a ten-year-old boy to prostitute himself for medicine.” Again, there was no question. Just his tone, even and well paced as he glared her. 

But this time she felt the need to explain herself. “It was a joke.”

“You don't make jokes like that with children.” He looked like he wanted to say more. But he held back. “You went and found him. After he left. You cared about him.”

“No I didn’t,” Sheila whispered.

“Then why go find him?” Batman growled.

“They were asking questions.”

After two days of dead silence from the ER, Sheila got twitchy. One of the nurses asked why she hadn’t signed Jason out of the ER when he’d left. Sheila had made some hurried excuse about being in a rush and how Jason wasn’t her son. The nurse hummed curiously and looked at Jason's growing file, making Sheila nervous.

Since he had never checked out, and she had never been able to formally diagnose him, if he showed up dead or something it would be her the police would interrogate.

So one night after her shift, she put some of her equipment in a backpack and went out with a bag filled with medication, food, and bottles of water to Park Row.

She hated that part of town.

It reminded her of the shit show she left behind when she’d walked out on Willis and decided that she wasn’t going to be a punching bag anymore. She never went back to Park Row or the Narrows. The plot of Gotham they took up was also known as Crime Alley, so dubbed after Bruce Wayne’s billionaire parents were gunned done in a robbery gone wrong in Park Row, and the Narrows was just as dangerous as their neighbours.

The first place she went to was the shit house apartment Willis inherited from his deadbeat Dad, and all she found in there was an abandoned apartment behind crime tape. It was still filled with dusty furniture, and there were some traces of a kid having lived there in the shape of clothing, but mostly it was drug paraphernalia and holes in the wall.

She left there and went out onto the street and asked around. A few pointed her to The Narrows side of town, and she pulled her coat around her tighter on instinct alone. She’d been apart of Park Row, and the Narrows crowd could get territorial when she was a teenager.

She asked a few more people who were unhelpful and was about to give up when she spotted a blonde-haired boy, who couldn’t have been older than thirteen, standing with a girl who was a bit older, on a corner beneath a street lamp.

It was pouring down rain, and he had a clear plastic umbrella over his head, that both blended with the dark and turned him into a beacon every time a car drove by. When Sheila got closer, she took one look at his outfit and knew precisely what he was. He wore too tight knee-length cut-offs, an oversized t-shirt that hung off his shoulders and tied around his waist, and the brightest pair of yellow gumboots she had ever seen, dressed to look both childish and seductive. She’d known so many boys and girls like him growing up that it barely phased her anymore. 

“Heya honey.” The kid spoke in a childish voice and grinned ear to ear, batting his long mascara coloured eyelashes down to his blush stained cheeks. He was a lanky thing with barely any meat on his bones, and sticky pink lip-gloss lips, all of which only served to make him look younger.

“I’m looking for a kid,” Sheila said.

“Well aren’t they all?” the girl laughed, who looked no better than the boy. She was black, with her hair tied up into baubles on either side of her head and blue lip-gloss instead of pink. Her clothes were more private school girl than an innocent boy, with a blue tartan skirt and a white shirt tied up above her hollow stomach and below her flat chest. She bit her lips and tried to lean into Sheila, but Sheila stepped away.

“A specific kid. Yay-tall. Black hair. Foul mouth. Goes by the name Jason.”

The boy looked Sheila up and down with one eyebrow raised to his hairline. “Jason only sells his running capabilities and whatever car parts he steals. He’s not into sex.” He said it almost protectively, his voice raised a little and not so girlish as it was before. “So I can find you another kid who looks kind of like him if that’s your thing but–”

“I’m not here for sex, Mary Magdalene.” She lifted the clear plastic bag, showing him the contents. “I know he’s sick. I figured he wasn’t looking after himself and I brought him stuff. I’m a doctor.” She pulled out her hospital identification and showed him, and he looked her up, and down, still unsure of it all.

He looked at his friend and back at Sheila, then rolled his eyes. “Hey sweets, if any of my regulars come by, tell them I’m with a big roller or something,” the boy said to his partner, handing her his umbrella. His whole act was dropped, his voice deeper and his body less tense.

“But  _Tommy!_  You said we’d go out together tonight.”

“I know, I know, but… I’ve been worried about Jason for a while. Kid looks like shit and won’t stop moaning.” Tommy kissed the girl’s cheek and left her the umbrella. He stepped out into the rain and almost immediately, the cheap mascara dripped down in his face. Sheila was carrying an umbrella, but he never offered to go under it. “Come on. I’ll show you where he is.”

Tommy led her through the backstreets of The Narrows, lifting his face up to the sky now and then to wash the makeup off his face. He was no longer acting coy or flirty, and he untied his t-shirt and some point, letting it fall around his hips. “Jason doesn’t like seeing me like this,” he explained, taking the edge of his shirt and wiping the rest of the makeup off, so it wasn’t melting down his face. He finally looked more like a teenage boy than a sugary sweet prepubescent child. “He’s very determined to get me off the street corners.”

“How terrible of him,” Sheila scoffed.

Tommy rolled his eyes. “Not all of us get to become doctors, sweetie. Jason might. But I’m not that smart. I’m Crime Alley trash, and I always will be.” In the street light, Sheila saw a flash of the pale inside of his elbow. The skin there was mottled with track marks, and as the makeup melted away, she saw the dark bruises of a user underneath his eyes.

He led her to an old movie theatre, on the corner of Third and Watson Drive. It was abandoned, and he checked the road for anyone watching before he pulled out a boarded-up door and nodded for her to go ahead. She went inside, closing her umbrella and then Tommy grabbed a flashlight hanging from the back of the wall and flicked it on before closing the door behind them. There was a staircase that led up above the theatre, but Tommy went to a box behind the door and stripped off his pants and boots without any hesitation, yanking on a loose tracksuit and a pair of sneakers. “Like I said. He hates seeing me like this,” he muttered, changing his top as well, so he was dry and in a clean shirt with Mickey Mouse emblazoned on the front.

He went ahead of Sheila on the rickety winding stairs, two steps at a time until he got to another door at the top. This one was padlocked, but Tommy undid the board of the second step from the top of the stairs and pulled out a box with a key inside.

“Home sweet home,” Tommy muttered, opening the door for them.

“Was Jason alright?” Batman asked, interrupting her train of thought. She blinked and stared at the myth of Gotham, who suddenly sounded worried about the little boy in her story.

“He was better than I expected,” she said, wary that the wrong answer may give the Dark Knight a perfect reason to make her disappear.

Tommy strode purposefully across the room to the mattress under the window where a pile of blankets were hiding a mattress.

Sheila walked in more slowly, taking in the cobweb-filled magic of the place, eye trying to take in all the old posters tacked on the wall, and props that hung from the ceiling.

The attic above the theatre was as large as the entire property with impossibly tall ceilings filled with overlapping beams. It filled to the brim with all the discarded odds and ends from its days as a live theatre. A trunk of curtains and a wardrobe filled with costumes and expired makeup were in one corner, and there was a giant spotlight that someone had hollowed out of glass and filled with candles in another. There was even a projector, and it looked like someone had tried tinkering with it, but hadn’t gotten it to work yet, and rat traps on every surface wherever one looked.

It all smelt of musty dirt and damp, and she wondered how Jason and Tommy hadn’t gotten an infection of some sort.

“Jason,” Tommy whispered, kicking the pile of blankets. He hit something solid, and Sheila was a little surprised. It didn’t look as if there was anything under there but sure enough, the covers rustled and moved, and there was a grunt from deep within them. Sheila quietly edged closer to the boys, until she was at the foot of the mattress. “Go ‘way. M’trying t’sleep.”

Tommy nudged him again. “Get up, Jay. We’ve got company.”

That got Jason up, and he moved like lightning in front of Tommy, with a knife in his hand aimed straight at Sheila before she could even blink.

He looked terrible.

Covered in red dots from his hair all over his body, and waving from side to side like a thin, sickly tree stuck in a strong breeze. “You,” Jason coughed.

“You,” Sheila replied.

Jason glared at her, not letting her out of his sight. “Why’d you let her in, Tommy? Now we’ve got to find a new place to crash.” He still held the knife up, and Sheila wondered why the hell she’d come at all.

“Don’t be a little shit. She’s got food and medicine.” Tommy grabbed Jason and disarmed him quickly, shoving the knife back beneath the pillow.

Jason glared at him briefly and huffed, getting back under the covers. “Fine. You want company, you deal with her. I’m going to sleep.”

Tommy rolled his eyes and fell to his knees beside Jason, pulling the covers out from beneath him, then pulled at them. “Come _on_. You wouldn’t stop coughing last night.”

Despite his small size, Jason was surprisingly strong and held the covers pinned over his head. “We sleep in a bed made mostly of dust, shithead. What’d you think would happen?” he asked, his voice straining a bit.

“Stop being a pain in my ass! I don’t want you to die, so just get out and see the doctor!” Tommy heaved back and with an almighty grunt, pulled the covers back revealing Jason in an oversized pair of boxer shorts and tank.

Sheila raised her eyebrow at the comically grumpy look on his face, and he turned onto his back and crossed his arms as he glared up at her. “I brought my bag to check you out,” she said. “Want to do this sitting up, or is it going to be a lie-down examination?”

“He’s gonna sit up, ain’t you Jase?” Tommy poked Jason painfully in the side, and he yelped and sat up.

“Okay, okay!” he hissed.

Tommy beamed and looked up at Sheila. “He’s all yours, Doc.” He held his hand out for the food and water, and Sheila gave it to him, not too worried about him running off. He muttered something about a microwave and walked to one of the many corners of the giant space to heat up the soup.

Sheila took out her stethoscope and Jason didn’t push her away when she squatted down and started checking his chest. “There’s still some infection, but it’s not too bad,” she said, once she was done. She took his temperature too, and he was running a low-grade fever. “You scratching?”

“Trying not to,” he muttered.

Sheila looked around in the dirty pile of sheets he was sleeping in. “Might do you well to take these to a laundromat every now and then.”

“I spent all my money on fancy-ass antibiotics,” he croaked, glaring up at her.

She noted that there were antibiotics there, sitting on a pile of books next to the bed. There was also a bucket of water, probably rainwater, and a cup. If nothing else, the kid was resourceful. “Well good. I was worried you were going to die and it would be linked back to some inadequate care on my behalf.” She got up off the floor and dusted her hands on her jeans.

“Dying might be worth it if it fucked up your life,” Jason snapped.

Sheila shook her head at him. “Kid, I don’t owe you anything. You’re my deadbeat ex-boyfriend's son who I never even met before. You’re lucky I even came here, you little shit.”

Jason glared at her. “Oh, so sad. The guy you chose to be with tossed you around. I didn’t get to choose Willis, you know. I got lumped with him. He was my Dad, and I didn’t have a fucking choice, so excuse me if I wanted to see if it gets better than this!” He threw his hands up and pointed around him, showing the shitshow that was his life.

Despite herself… despite the fact that she hated Willis Todd and vowed never to be near his darkness again, she couldn’t help staring the boy and thinking he was the thing she kept looking for in Willis.

Every time she went back to him, every time she believed that he was going to change, Sheila convinced herself that she was doing it because she saw something in him that no one else could see. A man who had goals and passions and desires, and mostly the ability to be good. But they took drugs together, and he took her money sometimes, but she told herself it was worth it because they loved each other. Or at least, she’d thought they’d loved each other.

That wasn’t Love.

“You can keep coming to the hospital,” Sheila said eventually, and Jason glared at her.

“I don’t need your charity,” he spat.

“Yeah you do, shithead,” she snapped, falling back into habits from her days growing up in the dregs of Gotham. He looked lost for a second but didn’t speak. “I’ll give you free check-ups whenever you need them and whenever you’ve actually fucked up something. Don’t hurt yourself to come see me. That’s stupid. Also, stop telling people you’re my son. People are asking me why they haven’t met you yet, and you’re not my kid. Actually, let’s get that straight first, you are not my son.”

Jason took a minute, but nodded, curling his body up into a ball. For the first time since Sheila met him, he looked his age. “Okay,” he said in a small voice. “Can… Can I ask questions? About my Dad? Or my grandparents?”

“No. Hate your Dad. Didn’t know your grandparents, other than the fact they were old when we were teenagers.”

“Can you help me find my mom’s family?”

“No.”

“So it’s just free check-ups?”

“Just free check-ups.”

“But Tommy gets to come too?”

Sheila looked over her shoulder at the boy as he precariously balanced three bowls of soup in his arms, shuffling back towards them at a snail’s pace. “Fine. Your boyfriend can come too.”

Jason made a face. “That’s gross. I’m ten.”

“Fine. The _Hooker_ can come too.”

Jason glared at her but nodded after thinking about it. “Yeah. Okay. Free shit is free shit, I guess.”

Sheila nodded and realised, they only had a minute or so until Tommy got close enough to hear them. “Oh and, Kid… It gets better than this.”

“His general health improved after that,” Sheila said, rubbing her hand on the table. Her palms were itchy, and her nails were too broken to scratch them. “He brought Tommy in too. Asked to get him under the table STD tests and I did them ‘cause… He was a brat, but Jason was entertaining. The other doctors loved it when he came in because he’d make them laugh. He just generally pissed me off. I think he enjoyed doing it. But a promise is a promise, and… I didn’t mind him coming around.”

Sheila didn’t notice the way Batman clenched his fists, or how his breathing changed pattern. She didn’t see the look in his eyes of a man who had just lost everything. “You lost contact with him,” he said, voice like steel.

“He got adopted.” Sheila ran her hands up and down her face as she laughed, still so amused by it all. Not amused. Furious. Jealous. Pissed off. “By Bruce fucking  _Wayne_. The  _Billionaire_. I mean, I told him it gets better, but that got really fucking better for him, y’know?”

Almost a full year after Sheila had met Jason for the first time, she realised he hadn’t been in the hospital for a few weeks. He usually went in at least once a fortnight. More often if he was trying to get Tommy checked up. It was a miracle that boy hadn’t caught anything more than HPV, especially with all the sexual partners and needles he’d gone through.

But she looked at her schedule, and it had been six weeks since she’d last seen him.

She was a bit worried something had happened to him, so after work she collected her things and went back to the theatre, but the inside was empty. What was more concerning was that the collection of things she had labelled  _Jason’s_  the few times she’d been there – because she had gone back on a few occasions like when he’d been stabbed or beaten unconscious after delivering an unhappy message, and Tommy would call her – were all gone.

There was no book pile nightstand or a small chest of keepsakes near the front door. The Red Power Ranger that had been stuffed under the mattress was still there, but Jason liked to pretend it wasn’t his, and Tommy would roll his eyes.

She went back out, opening her umbrella because it was pouring down rain and went to Tommy’s corner where the flash of the clear umbrella blinded her momentarily.

He was there, with a different friend next to him, an older muscly white boy with long hair and a tight sparkly dress. It was a little jarring seeing him in the night time. She had grown used to seeing Tommy dressed around Jason, in jeans and t-shirts, like every other teenaged boy. He wasn’t effeminate or girly in any way shape or form then, and she’d almost convinced herself he was a very sexually active fourteen-year-old.

 Of course, she had forgotten that he didn’t dress up in his hooker gear around Jason, and it was a jarring comparison. His shorts were tiny, the pockets longer than the coverage and he was wavering in heels, or maybe that was the drugged-out sluggishness that covered his face. The makeup had been upped too, in bright larger colours and Sheila knew that if Tommy and Jason had still lived together, Tommy wouldn’t have been allowed to leave their theatre like that. “What’s up Doc,” Tommy slurred when he saw her, then laughed at his own joke.

“Tommy, Tommy’s friend,” she greeted. She studied both of their faces and flinched at the blown-out pupils. “You boys okay?”

“Peachy, Doc,” Tommy grinned. He had surprisingly clean teeth for a homeless kid, but Jason was a neat freak and had probably gotten him in the habit of brushing his teeth every day. “I’m just having a ball.”

Sheila hummed and glanced at the silent and stoic boy he was with who kept glaring down his nose at Sheila. On closer inspection, his hair was a wig, and he looked like he worked out every day, twice a day. She leant away from him and concentrated on Tommy. “I went to your place. Couldn’t find Jason. Do you know where he is? It’s been a while since I heard from him.”

Tommy’s grin fell, and he made a face like he was about to vomit or cry. He took a staggering step towards her, pointing his finger at her face. He matched her height in the heels, and he was broader than a year ago, having come into a growth spurt and she felt, for the first time, intimidated by the teenaged boy. “You stay away from him! He doesn’t need to be reminded of our shit.”

Sheila took a step back. “What do you mean?”

“He’s safe.” Tommy let his hand drop and pulled back, having realised he may have been overreacting. “He’s got a family now. A brother. A father. He got adopted.”

“Adopted?” Sheila said stunned. Last time she’d seen Jason, he hadn’t mentioned anything. “What do you mean, adopted? By who?”

“Jason was adopted, and I’m not screwing that up for him. He kept coming around here after Wayne took him, but I told him to fuck off and never come back. I punched him and told him I’d do worse if he tried coming back.” Tommy stuck his chin up a little proudly. His growth spurt mean he met her eye and he used that to his advantage. “So stay away from him, ‘cause I don’t want nothing from this shithole to touch him up in Wayne Manor.”

It jogged Sheila’s memory only then that the other day she’d glanced at the papers and saw Bruce Wayne had taken in another kid. She remembered joking with one of the nurses about how he’d gotten another young boy now that the older one was grown up. “Wait… Wayne. As in  _Bruce_  Wayne?”

Tommy giggled a little, his drug addled-stupor, swinging his emotions from side to side. “Yep. Jason Wayne. He’s better than you now.” Tommy giggled again, using the street lamp to hold himself up. “Y’know when he first met you, he said he was gonna be better than you one day. Now he’s a fucking  _Wayne_.”

Sheila didn’t care. She lowered her voice. “I know you do that confidentiality thing, but kid, you need to tell me now. Is Bruce Wayne one of your regulars?”

Tommy barked out his laughter. “Jason doesn’t do sex, lady. He’d rather kill himself.”

“After Jason was adopted, you ceased all contact with him?” Batman said in the present.

Sheila frowned. “Sort of… there was this one time, his name came up in the charts at work. A consult for a GSW. The kid had hit his head when he fell, and it turned out to be Jason. But I was in surgery when the page came through, and someone else took the case. I checked on him when I saw his name on the schedule, but he was out of it. I don’t even think he knew I was there.”

Sheila had entered his room.

A private suite, generally reserved for a celebrity recovering from plastic surgery but given to the youngest heir to the Wayne fortune. It was rare for Gotham Private to even get gunshot victims, but it had happened two streets away, and when the ambulance had seen his ID, they drove the fifteen-year-old straight to Gotham’s most prestigious hospital.

He was bigger.

When she’d first met him, he barely took up half the bed, but now his feet were pressed against the end. Granted, he was sitting up, his head lolling to the side.

His hair was shinier and visibly cleaner, and he had muscle built up beneath his skin. He had been a good-looking kid, but he was he’d was fast turning into a good-looking man. Better looking that even Willis Todd.

Of course, she’d seen photos. There were plenty of pictures in the tabloids of Richard and Jason Wayne, with and without their father. So maybe she stalked him in the trash magazines. Sometimes perhaps she tapped the pages too loudley, more annoyed than she should have been. It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy that someone with as much influence and power as Bruce Wayne had seen potential in Jason. It was that he got out of the life so easy. Because Tommy had been right when they’d first met. Jason was a smart one, and he could have clawed his way out of Crime Alley like she did, but instead, he was given a meal ticket.

It annoyed her when she tried to think of what she could have been if she’d been given an opportunity like that. “How did you get shot, Kid?” Sheila whispered.

To her surprise, Jason opened one of his eyes groggily. She realised he must have just been wiped out on pain meds. He grinned wide and drunkenly, his eyebrows moving to the top of his head. “Doc!” he called out. “Sheila, Sheila Sheila…” He laughed and hiccupped and then shut his eyes again like it never even happened.

Sheila rolled her eyes and read his charts, and checked his vitals. He was going to be okay. He was lucky, the bullet missed any vitals. In fact, it just lodged itself in his flesh, as if he’d had something dense to take most of the impact covering him.

With a twinge of her lips, she realised she’d missed him, and for the first time in ever, Sheila wondered to herself if she should have adopted him after the first time he’d shown up at the hospital.

“Doctor Lindal?” Before Sheila got too far down a spiralling path of regrets, she turned around and found herself face to face with none other than Bruce Wayne.

“Mr Wayne,” she sputtered.

“You’re not Doctor Lindal,” Bruce said, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

She stiffened.

This was not the childish playboy she had grown accustomed seeing drunk on Entertainment News.

This man frightened her. He loomed over her, and looked over Jason, cataloguing every part of him as if she had poisoned him while he was gone. “What are you doing here?” he growled.

Sheila shivered and took a step back. “My name is Doctor Haywood. I know Jason…  _knew_  Jason.”

Bruce looked at her badge and then her face, and back again to Jason, making sure he was okay. He pulled back, and he looked less terrifying. His dark hair was swept back on his head, and his suit jacket was thrown over his arm. He still looked more put together than a lot of people Sheila knew, but she could see his edges were crumpled and exposed. “You’re Willis’ ex.”

Sheila blushed and found herself nodding. “Yes. Jason used to come to me for check-ups.”

“I know. He told me.” Bruce pushed past her, apparently deciding she wasn’t a threat, and picked up his charts, studying them. She was surprised.

“He spoke about me?” she asked.

“Once.” He looked up from the charts and looked her up and down. “I couldn’t quite comprehend that the Doctor was looking after my homeless son and his drug-addicted prostitute best friend, and didn’t take them to child services to get help. He begged for an hour for me to not to report you to the medical board.”

Sheila felt as if she’d been slapped, and the cold look in Bruce Wayne’s eyes did nothing to alleviate that. “They didn’t want help,” Sheila said.

“Tommy’s dead,” Bruce said, his tone even. Sheila thought of the clear umbrella, a beacon on the road and the way he’d gotten all defensive when she’d asked about Jason. “It was only the reason why I found out about you. They may not have wanted it, but they needed it. You were selfish enough to deny them basic dignities. To deny them life.”

Jason moved just the slightest bit, and Bruce’s attention dropped away from her and went straight to him. He moved next to Jason’s bed to be by his side.

Jason did open his eyes for a brief second and spotted Bruce. “Go ‘way…” he grumbled.

Bruce slipped his hand into Jason’s and squeezed. “I’m not going away.”

“Just gonna… yell…”

“I’m not going to yell. I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I was upset. You would be too if you got a phone call at two am saying I was shot, so I don’t feel the need to apologise for that. But I shouldn’t have shouted.”

Jason frowned at Bruce but drifted off again after a minute and Bruce sighed wearily, watching Jason breathing even out.

Bruce looked over his shoulder at Sheila, as if wondering what she was still doing there. “You can leave.”

Sheila was being dismissed and for a good reason. She didn’t have a right to know about Jason’s life. She wasn’t his mother or even his friend. She was just her ex’s kid, and a doctor he annoyed from time to time. After a long lingering look at Jason, she turned on her heel and left them alone.

“That was the last time you saw him,” Batman concluded.

Sheila shook her head. “No.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Last week.”

Batman jolted in surprise. It was something he hadn’t known. “What?”

Sheila trembled, wiping her hand on her face. “It started… it started six months ago.”

Sheila had been on call and woke up to her phone ringing. She quickly tried to answer it before it woke up her fiancé, Jeremy. They’d met over a year ago, and he was quite understanding of her job and her needs, but at the same time she tried not to make him mad, a habit left over from Willis. “Hello?” she whispered, climbing out of bed. She went into her walk-in and started grabbing her clothes.

“Sh-Sh-Sheila?”

Sheila blinked and looked at the number on her phone. It was blocked, and she got out of bed, feet on the floor. “Jason?” she whispered.

Even though the voice was pained and breathless, she still recognised it. She’d heard him on TV making speeches for Wayne charity galas and in quick interviews with passer-by reporters who asked him why he didn’t have an Instagram. She was more invested in his life than she’d initially thought.

“Why are you calling her?” Jason growled. It took her a minute to realise he wasn’t talking to her. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Oh now, Boy-oh… She has  _everything_  to do with this.” Sheila shivered, a voice so vile sweeping through the phone.

“Jason?” she said. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” Jason snapped.

“Well, she’s the reason you’re here! The woman who birthed you.”

“She didn’t give birth to me.”

“I didn’t give birth him,” she said at the same time. She felt Jeremy stirring behind her, but was too lost in the phone conversation.

“No need to lie now. I’m just trying to reunite mother and son!”

“She didn’t… she  _told_  me,” Jason snapped.

“She  _lied_ , kiddo. Don’t you know what a liar is by now?”

There were grunts of a struggle through the phone, and she was so lost as to what was happening, she just listened. “What does it matter? There’s no reason to call her. This is between you and me Joker.”

Sheila’s blood ran cold. The Joker. The Crime Prince of Gotham. “Hang up, Sheila!” Jason commanded. “Hang up, now!”

“Oh, you’re gonna ruin all the–” But Sheila didn’t know what Jason was going to ruin, because she did as he said and hung up her phone, putting it down on her bedside and stared at it as if it were infected.

“Honey?” Jeremy was sitting up in bed and looking over at her. Sheila wasn’t sure how long she stayed, staring at the phone but her heart hadn’t yet stopped racing as he reached out and touched her shoulder. She flinched at his touch, and he pulled away just as quickly, as though he’d been burnt. “Sheila, who was that on the phone?”

Sheila stared blankly and shuddered as she breathed out, swallowing back bile. “No one,” she murmured. “Wrong number.”

“You ignored the call,” Batman growled. “You didn’t tell anyone? You didn’t say anything?”

Sheila shook her head. “I got rid of the phone and told my husband it was stolen. The new phone was bought under his name. I stopped seeing Jason and Bruce on the news, and I ran into Richard Grayson once. He didn’t know who I was. But I could see it in his eyes. Jason was missing, and the Wayne’s were trying to hide it.”

“What happened next?” Batman demanded.

Sheila shook her head. “I… I barely remember how it happened. It was a few weeks after I’d gotten that call and one minute I was on my way to the car and then…”

A cold wash of water hit Sheila’s face, and she woke up with a gasp. She coughed and spluttered and leant forward to clear her nostrils. “Wakey, wakey!”

Sheila groaned and looked up, blinking the water out of her eyes.

For a second, she wished she had just died.

Because standing above her, swinging his cane from one side to the other, was the Clown Prince of Gotham. “Morning, Doctor! I’m glad you woke up when you did because I was afraid the patient wouldn’t make it!”

Sheila screamed but the cane in his hand wrapped over her face, almost dislocating her jaw and she held the sound of her next shout in. “Oh, no, no, no, that just won’t do! I can’t call in a doctor for my doctor, can I?”

Sheila shivered, squeezing her hands around the edges of the seat. _Just get out of here alive,_ she thought to herself. _Get out of here alive._ “What do you want?”

Joker beamed, stretching his grin over his face. “There’s a boy I have in my custody, you may know him. Jason.”

Sheila flinched and pulled back. “I… I don’t know him. Not really. I-I used to–”

“Save me the sob story,” Joker drawled. “I’m not going to hurt you, as long as _you_ do something for _me_.”

“What did he want?” Batman asked in the present.

Sheila licked her lips. “Jason had some broken ribs. He wanted me to treat them.”

Well, he had a bit more than just some broken ribs.

There were cuts to his entire body, drawn over black and blue skin. Blood dribbled down his lips and nose and ears and… She wasn’t even sure where to start on the unconscious boy.

He was in his black briefs, that fit better than his boxers when he was ten, and she looked him up and down on the stainless-steel table and hesitated, trying to figure where to touch first. “I need…” She licked her lips. “I need my bag.”

Joker hummed and nodded to his sidekick, Harley Quinn. She rolled her eyes and stalked out of the room, walking by a camera that was on them, a little red light flashing from next to the lens. He had a gun train on her, or at least he had a gun in his hand that was waving in her general direction. “Don’t mind her. She’s a doctor too, you see, and she was very upset with me that I insisted you treat him. She thinks I’m ignoring her but, no. This is just more mind games. I need the boy to know I can get into every corner of his life and you… You’re his darkest corner.”

Sheila shivered as the gun barrel pulled the hair over her shoulder as Joker leant in closer, breathing down her exposed neck. “I’m not his mother.”

“Oh, I know that. _You_ know that. But this guy…” Joker moved the gun over and pressed it between Jason’s eyes. “He’s never been too sure. He thinks you might be lying because you’re selfish.”

“I’m not selfish.”

Joker laughed, roaring like a madman. “Oh, that’s _funny_. You actually believe that. Oh wow, and I thought _I_ was the clown.” He cackled, and the gun waved in the air, pointing in every which direction as he moved erratically.

“And then he just let you go?” Batman said.

“Yes,” she whispered. “After I helped Jason, he knocked me out again and when I woke up… He’d drugged me up, and I did some… terrible things.”

Sheila groaned, throwing her arm over her face.

Everything hurt.

Slowly, she sat up and looked around at what was her living room.

It was trashed.

The mirror above the couch was shattered, and beer bottles were everywhere. It looked like someone had, had a party and she felt like all the patrons had danced on top of her. She tipped over the side of the coffee table she was passed out on, and threw up scalding bile, shivering. She couldn’t remember what had happened. The last thing she remembered was stitching up Jason and then…

She gingerly sat up, looking down at herself.

Her jacket was laid over her. She was in the jeans and shirt she’d left work in and her sneakers missing. She got up. The room spun, and she almost threw up again. She would have too if her phone hadn’t started to ring.

The noise was coming from underneath a couch cushion, and she grunted as she had to bend down to pick it up. “Hello?” she answered, hoping it wasn’t the clown.

There was silence on the other end for a minute then: “You’re awake.”

Jeremy. “I…” She looked around the house and pushed some of her hair off her face. “Yeah. Yeah I… Where are you?”

“I had to get out of there last night. You were a mess.”

Sheila wondered how to tell him. “I… I don’t know what happened.”

“You kept saying the Joker took you.”

“I did?” she whispered, flinching at the sight of needles on the table. “I… I don’t know what happened.”

“You said you were sober.”

“I am,” she whispered, glancing around the room again. “I was…”

“Do you want me to take you to a centre or…?”

“No.” Sheila spotted a box on the cabinet above the TV. She stared at the purple thing, wrapped up in a green ribbon. “I’m sorry. It was all a mistake.” She walked over to the box and opened the ribbon slowly, heart pounding in her chest.

“What was inside?” Batman asked.

Sheila looked up at the Dark Knight, tapping her finger on the table. “There’s a new drug on the street. Highly addictive. Called JKS. It’s hard to find and worth more than gold, and if you’re addicted to it, you will sell your soul to get some more.

“That’s what Joker shot me up with. He was telling me that he would give me whatever I needed to… to function. As long as I kept quiet about Jason, and kept treating him.”

“Where was he keeping him?” Batman asked.

Sheila shook her head. “I don’t know. I never knew when he was going to take me. I was just knocked out, and when I woke up, I was there – wherever _there_ was.”

“And Jason? Was he ever awake?”

Sheila nodded. “Once or twice.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason had cried upon seeing her. He clawed his hands up, trying to grab her and pull her close. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean for this… I’m sorry.”

Or maybe it was more than once or twice. But sometimes, when Sheila saw Jason lying on that cold table, she wanted to not save his life. Because if he was dead, she was free.

She looked up at Batman. “The drug Joker had given me, I later found out was of his own creation. It deteriorated my cognitive functions every time I went without it, but it could make me blackout if I took it. I tried to get away from him, but that meant paying for my own habit. It’s expensive and I… I ended up mortgaging my house to get some.” Sheila pressed her face into her hands, ashamed in herself. “Jerry left me when he found out, and I got fired from my job when I showed up still high. He ruined my life.”

But she wasn’t sure if she talking about Joker or Jason.

“When did you see Jason last?” Batman asked. He was leaning on the table over her. “How did he look?”

“Last week,” she said. “And he looked… terrible.”

Jason’s face was marred with not only bruises but makeup. It was poorly done - Tommy would be disappointed. He had been painted to look like a clown, and again he was in nothing but his briefs, but they were heavily stained and worse than the clothes she had met him in.

For some reason, they’d given him a haircut but it looked like something a small page boy would wear, and when he was deposited on the tray by a husky clown faced man, he bounced.

“What happened?” she asked, despite herself.

“We decided to give the kid a makeover. But I preferred his old look better,” Joker said, tilting his head to the side. “Don’t you think he looks better like this?”

Sheila didn’t say a word and just began to treat him.

After dealing with the bigger things, Joker left to go check on something outside, and Sheila moved her hand up to Jason’s cheek to start treating the split skin there.

He must have woken up because his hand was suddenly over hers and Jason was cupping it to his cheek. His eyes were watering as he looked up at her, bright blue and filled with pain. “You... you okay?”

Sheila stared at him, then pulled her hand out of his grasp. “You’re the one on the slab, Kid.”

Jason nodded weakly, and she was pretty sure he didn’t understand. “I’m gonna... We’re gonna get out of here. I prom- promise.”

She wondered if she should tell him that she was getting out. Every night and day. She had no choice in coming back, but she didn’t tell anyone or go to the police. “My Dad… my Dad is gonna come and… he’ll get us.”

Sheila scoffed, thinking of Bruce Wayne. He was carrying on as if nothing was going on. Of course, she didn’t know what the Joker was lauding over his head, but the Billionaire wasn’t on TV desperately pleading for his safe return. “Your Dad doesn’t care,” Sheila told him, bluntly. “I don’t even think he knows you’re gone.”

Jason flinched like she’d slapped him. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m really not, Kid. He’s not coming. Poor boys like you are a dime a dozen. Bruce Wayne does not fucking care about you.”

Batman slammed his fist down on the table, making Sheila jump. He glared at her, jaw tightened like he wanted to shout but was holding himself back. He breathed in deep, eyes fixed on Sheila with such a burning hatred, it frightened her. “Why were you in the warehouse last night?”

“Hey Doc,” Joker said, getting off the doorway he was leaning on. The bulky clown had collected Jason and taken him back to the other room where he was kept. She had never seen it, stuck in what looked like a boiler room in a basement. “I’m gonna need a favour from you.”

“Me cleaning up your victims isn’t enough?” she spat.

Joker laughed softly. “Aw, why do you have to be like that? All I’ve done is remind you of who you really are. The Crime Alley girl with a bad habit. A bad habit for drugs.” He cackled, and Sheila tightened her fist where her hand was already shaking. It was hard to concentrate without the JKS. Harder still to hold herself back from biting out a remark that might get her killed.

“What do you want Joker?”

“A favour,” he said, as kindly as he was able. “And if you do this for me, I’ll owe you one.”

Sheila trembled as she thought of the only thing she wanted from Joker. “Word on the street is, you’re the creator of JKS,” she said.

Joker’s permanent smile somehow grew. “Why, yes… Yes, I am. I’m a diverse criminal, you see. Fingers in many pots.”

She ignored his rant. “They also say that you have a cure. That will stop the addiction,” she whispered.

Joker’s head fell to the side. “Oh they do, do they?”

“I’ll do you your favour,” Sheila said, gaining confidence with every breath. “And I’ll keep treating Jason whenever you need me to. I’ll even keep pretending you have me kidnapped. Give me the cure, and I’ll do whatever the hell you want me to.”

“Anything?” he laughed. “What if it involved the Boy _dying_?”

Sheila matched his green-eyed stared and nodded. “Anything.”

“You bargained your life for his,” Batman growled. “You’d just left a broken boy on a table, who was injured out of his mind and promised to save you, then you turned around and offered to _kill_ him!”

“I worked hard!” Sheila shouted. Batman pulled back, wary of her sudden outburst. “I worked hard to get out of Crime Alley! To get away from my parents! From _Willis Todd!_ I worked my ass off, and that broken boy took it all away from me!”

“Why didn’t you go get him help? You could have gone to the police.”

“Who was going to believe me?” she scoffed. “I’m a junkie, Batman. I’m not from Gotham Heights. I didn’t grow up with Daddy’s silver spoon in my mouth. Anyway, this wasn’t even on the police radar. Bruce Wayne doesn’t even care, and he’s the kid's father.”

“If Bruce Wayne doesn’t care, then why am I here?” Batman growled, and Sheila’s heart thudded in her chest. There had been rumours for years that Batman was on Wayne Enterprises payroll, but here the Bat was confirming it. Thousands of reporters would die to be a fly on the wall of that interrogation room, and it made her realise that the camera in the room was turned off. “The police were always aware of Jason Todd’s disappearance, but it was kept quiet. The Joker wants an audience. Telling the public would have endangered his life.” Batman straightened up, but anger still radiated from his core. She had to wonder if she’d made the right choice in siding with Joker.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sheila said, despite herself. She stared at the table. “He’s dead now anyway.”

Joker had explained it to her very clearly. She would be in one room, and Jason would be in the other, and Batman would come and be forced to choose. No matter what option he chose though, Jason would die, and Sheila would live. The way the bombs lined the warehouse on the abandoned side of East End, and how it was designed meant Sheila was perfectly safe.

She hadn’t believed him for a second, but she didn’t see another option. Either way, she was going to die. From a drug overdose or from the bomb. _Better the bomb. Better instant._

It didn’t stop her from screaming for help, fear clinging in her throat as she thought about dying in an abandoned warehouse alone.

But, Joker had kept his promise.

When the timer ran out, and the bombs went off around the warehouse, the structure above her head held as everything else crumbled down around her. Also, like he had promised, Batman had come.

“Jason!” a rough voice broke through rubble trapped above her. “ _Jason!_ ”

“Over here, Batman!” A younger voice shouted, and it was right above her. Sheila looked up. The ceiling was still whole just above her head, but it was thin enough that she could hear through it. Still, she heard rubble being shifted aside and looked up as dried cement and water from a broken pipe fell on her face.

A hole opened, letting in sunlight, but it was immediately darkened by Night itself pushing itself in and dropping through.

Batman’s cape flew up around him, and he landed in front of Sheila in a crouch.

He stood up and looked around, eyes settling on her as a slimmer more youthful figure dropped in beside him, not as gracefully. In fact, he fell and bounced up a second later, as if nothing had happened.

Robin, as he was known, straightened up and looked around too, but his eyes settled on her. He quickly ran forward and took out one of those ninja stars shaped like a bird he used from his pocket to slice open her ropes. “Are you okay?” he asked. He pulled up the side of his t-shirt as his shoulder was exposed. Sheila had never seen Robin up close before, but his uniform had never looked so ill-fitting in the photos.

“I-I’m…” Sheila just barely managed to stand before Batman was on her, looming over her and holding both her shoulders in his large gloved hands.

“Where is he?” Batman demanded. “Where’s Jason?”

“J-Jason?” Sheila said, trying to act as if she’d never heard of him. Joker told her it could never come back to him through her. That she just had to play dumb. “I don’t… I don’t know who-”

“ _Jason Todd!_ ” Batman shouted, lifting her up from her seat. She yelped as she dangled above the ground. “The boy! I know you know who I’m talking about.  _Where is he?!_ ”

Sheila flinched and couldn’t lie for the life of her. “Next room,” she whispered.

Batman turned his head, looking at the door and he threw her aside, and she crashed into the wall, barely standing on her weak legs. She lifted her head up in time to see Batman yank open the door and rubble tumble inside. He didn’t care, pulling it out stone by stone. Sheila couldn’t figure out why Batman cared so much about a street kid. It couldn’t have just been because of Bruce Wayne being a billionaire. Batman didn’t take money.

But Robin stared on helplessly, his face red as Batman tore out every rock to find Jason Todd

He pushed back a large rock and Sheila spotted a hand, hanging limply in the grey. “It’s… it’s too late,” she whispered, and at that point, her legs gave out. She would have been unconscious on the floor had it not been for Robin grabbing her.

Sheila barely got to scream before the table in the interrogation room was being pushed aside, and she was lifted out of her chair and slammed against the wall. “Where did Joker take you?” Batman shouted.

“I don’t know. We were in East End and–”

“No. When you went to treat Jason. Where were you? What was around?”

Sheila shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see much other than a water boiler.”

“Think!”

“I _am_ thinking!” she shouted back. “What does it matter anyway? He’s dead!”

Batman let her fall to the ground, and she fell like a rag doll, slumping on the ground. He pulled back and stepped away from her. “He’s not. It was a mannequin dressed up to look like him. It wasn’t Jason.”  Batman stared down at her like she was the scum of the earth. Like he was better than her. For a long time, Sheila had thought she was better than everyone else, but now…

“I didn’t want Jason in my life,” she confessed. “I’m not his mother. I’m just… I’m just…”

Batman stepped walked to the door and stepped towards the door. “You’re nothing. You could have saved Jason, but your selfishness got in the way. You’re not a mother, you’re right. You’re barely a person.”

Sheila shivered, curling in on herself.

With that, Batman left, shutting the door to the interrogation room behind him.

Then, Sheila was alone.

Bruce Wayne was right. She had been selfish when she’d met Jason, and she’d been selfish again when she’d heard him on the phone. She had just wanted a nice normal life and now… Now Sheila had nothing.

She stared at her hands in front of her. They were trembling.

_That’s… that’s the first sign of coming down._

The Joker had doused her up with something before he left her in the warehouse and Sheila had thought it was the cure but…

The Joker had lied.

“No,” she murmured. “No! NO!” She sat there and shook as she began to detox and the side effects came over her.

What a joke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think? I know she's not in the Arkhamverse but I hate Sheila so much and I really wanted to write something from her... and make her suffer. Maybe I have issues...
> 
> Can I just say - I am really happy you all liked the Lois chapter because that was the one I plugged together over the week. I read it again after I posted it (and edited it again - seriously, you all need to tell me when I stuff up grammar/editing/sentences) and really enjoyed it.
> 
> Also, in regards to the ages (cause everyone keeps asking) I'm using the ages from Young Justice universe - where Dick and Barbara are the same age and Jason is 2-3 years younger than them. (like, 2 1/2) and Tim is 2 years younger than him.
> 
> Oh and if you're wondering about the Park Row/Narrows thing both being called Crime Alley - it's because of something I'm writing for later... It's relevant. Just let it go.
> 
> I'll put the ages up in the next story. :)
> 
> P.S. Any Australians who love Chris Lilley catch the Summer Heights High reference?


	7. Harley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mother cleans her young. A mother feeds and waters her young. A mother makes her young smile.
> 
> Harley's gonna be a good mom to her baby, because she was such a good mom to Jason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a couple of people guessed Harley and she originally wasn't a mother I intended to write about, but then I was talking about Arkham with a friend and he reminded me about a plot point in Harley's story and I kind of had this idea.

“A punch in the head for being a bird, a punch or maybe thirty. That’s the way the Joker plays.  _Pop_  goes the birdy,” Harley Quinn sang beneath her breath, organising her tools on the trolley from the bench. Her accompaniments were the drips and drops of water in the underground basement of Arkham, and the soft whimpering of a bird.

Not many people knew how to get down there and even less knew that Harley and Joker were occupying the space. Almost everyone was sure that they were upstairs, receiving their treatments with the rest of the loons. It never really surprised Harley what things people would do for money.

A particularly loud sob came from the bird, and Harley looked over to the long jet black hair that was everywhere and a broken body clad in a red suit. Harley rolled her eyes and put down the pair of scissors she was holding. She surveyed her tools and slid out an L shaped pipe, testing the weight of it in her hands.

“Every night when I go out, the birdy’s getting shirty.” Harley walked over to the  _boy_  dressed in red on the chair. Jason. It took them three months to pry that name out of him, and now that they knew his name, she wrapped the duct tape around his mouth more often. She swung the pipe up into her palm, slapping it against her skin when she stood in front of him. “Take a stick and  _knock it off!_ ” Harley shouted the last part, slamming the pipe into his prone chest. There had been armour beneath his uniform, but they’d broken that a thousand times until the shattered pieces became a weapon against his skin.

Jason grunted as the wind was knocked right out of him and whimpered again, quieter, getting the message. “ _Pop_  goes the birdy,” she sang, tilting her head from one side to the other as she studied him.

Jason cried a lot. Not jagging or anything, but his face was always wet. “Gross,” she muttered. When Joker and Harley had their baby, he wouldn’t cry like that. All ugly. He would be a beautiful crier, just like his Mama. She went back to her trolley, slipping the pipe back amongst the things.

Not that she needed it.

Mr J wanted her to  _be nice_.

Harley pushed the trolley back over to Jason. He arched his neck to look at what playthings she was bringing him so he could prepare himself. He did it  _every_  single time. It was so annoying that he always wanted to know. She wondered why he didn’t understand that life was better filled with surprises.

“Don’t worry, kid. Mr J’s got something special planned tonight and wants you all dressed up,” Harley said, pushing the trolley, so it was right beside him. Her feet were killing her lately, but there was no other chair in the room but the one Jason was sat on. With a quiet hum, she climbed over his lap, and though Harley didn’t weigh too much, his weakened thighs would have been straining. “It’s gonna be hard. You’ve been messed up good, kid.” She twisted Jason’s face to the side, Mr J’s signature marring one side his face.

Jason tried to pull away from her hands, but she was everywhere on top of him. She reached over and picked up a hairbrush and began to pull out the knots in his short hair roughly. Jason grunted with every pull of the brush and Harley kicked her feet from her ankles as she continued to sing. “Up and down Gothams’ streets, The Bat starts to worry. He looks and looks but it's too late.  _Pop_  goes the birdy.”

Jason shuddered under Harley’s every touch. “Shush, shush,” she hushed him, rubbing her hands through his hair. Tears slid down his cheeks. “Come on, Boy Blunder. You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

He tried to say something, and Harley huffed.

With delicate fingers, she pried at the corner of the tape covering his mouth enough to get a small corner free. Then she ripped it as hard as she could, and Jason gasped, his mouth and cheeks red where the tape had been. “You wanted to say something?” she asked.

“Please Harley,” he begged. “Please let me go. Please. I won’t… I won’t go back to Batman. I’ll just leave. I’ll disappear. It’ll be like I never existed.”

Harley frowned at him. “Oh sweetums… If you never existed then who did I have all this fun with?”

Jason’s face screwed up in anguish, and she laid the tape back over his face. “Now, sit there like the good birdy I know you are and let Mama finish you up.” She sealed the tape shut and reached back for her scissors, and began to trim Jason’s hair.

She climbed off his lap to get the backs and kept humming the tune as she went. She had looked at a photo of Robin from  _before_  and tried to mimic the haircut so that even after all those months, he looked like the boy who got lost wandering off from Daddy-Bats.

She walked around to his front again and beamed. “Okay, I ain’t no hairdresser, but I am  _good_.”

His hair looked new and shiny, and Harley went and sat back on his lap, and carefully peeled back the tape again, slower this time. “You’re gonna look so good when I’m done with you, Birdy. Perfect for  _popping_.”

She considered him for a minute then looked over at Joker’s table of goodies. There were saltines there for her, and a tray of Arkham’s favourite gruel and peas. “You hungry? I don’t want you fainting from hunger pains.”

Jason thought for a minute, trying to figure out of it was a trap and nodded.

Harley hopped off his lap again and grabbed the tray, then shimmied over his thighs, careful to settle the food in between them. “I got no clue what this stuff is,” she said, lifting a spoon of the grey-brown meat. It dribbled back to the tray in clump and dribbles, and she turned her nose up at it. “Open wide.”

Jason couldn’t open his jaw more than a few centimetres and the spoon clacked against his teeth when she pushed it into his mouth. He swallowed each spoonful, cringing as he did so and Harley considered his face, halfway through the meal. “You ever had something  _really_  important to tell someone?”

Blinking and utterly bewildered, Jason only managed a small, “Huh?”

Harley rolled her eyes. “Come on, kid, you’re banged up, not deaf. Or did we burst an eardrum or something?”

Jason shuddered and licked his cracked lips. “Can… can I get some water? Can’t talk too well when my throat is dry.”

Harley shrugged. Joker did tell her to take care of him, and to make sure he looked good for the cameras. Cracked lips weren’t good. “Sure.” She leant down further. On the bottom level of the trolley was a bottle of water she’d intended to use mostly to wash him. She got up and picked up the bottle, leaving the tray on his lap.

Harley grinned, feeling giddy and brought the two-litre water up to his lips and he latched his mouth to the rim greedily. “Good boy,” she murmured, tilting the bottle back.

The first few sips were tentative, and slowly poured down his neck, so he could quench his thirst. But the longer she left the water on his lips, the faster he had to swallow, and the more alarmed his face became. “Round and round Cobblepot’s trench, the Batman chased the birdy...”

She moved the bottle back so he was forced to stretch his neck backwards and that each glug came too quick for him to swallow. He struggled, trying to spit the water back out but Harley pushed the water bottle down further, locking it between his jaw. He spluttered and choked, but Harley didn’t stop until the water spilt out of his nose. “The Joker thought ‘twas all in fun.  _Pop_ goes the birdy!”

She pulled out the bottle and Jason threw up as much of the water as he could, heaving onto tray violently, his food and water spilling on the floor. He knocked the dish and the gruel splattered on his boots, and Harley just watched and smirked. 

Jason choked and coughed up whatever was left in his stomach as Harley went to get a towel. “Anyway, like I was asking. You ever had to say something important to someone? Break some good news?”

“Fuck you,” Jason coughed.

“Wow, kid. You clearly lived a dreary life.” Harley collected a towel and more water, then went back to Jason and cleaned up the vomit and took out some of the wetness. He didn’t have to smell nice, just look it. Harley stuck a makeup brush in between her teeth like how she normally held her knife, then picked up the towel and rubbed Jason’s face dry, then laid it out over his lap so she could sit on him again. Her feet really were killing her. She pulled the brush out of her mouth and realised she needed to put some moisturiser on him first. “See, I got some news. Something I want to tell Mistah J, all special like, you know? The news is gonna change his life. Our life - And I don’t know how to tell him.”

Jason stared up at Harley as she dabbed cream all over his torn up face, making it smooth again. “So have you ever had big news to tell someone?”

Jason shuddered as Harley went and took out some liquid white foundation and dabbed it into his skin. “I…,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know… I guess. Once.”

“Once?”

“When… when my mom died.”

Harley paused, tilting her head to the side. “Your Mama’s dead?”

Jason nodded his head slowly. “When I was nine. I uh… I had to tell my grandparents she was dead.”

Harley resumed putting makeup on him, grabbing the pallet and the brush and pulling out the ivory dust. “Huh,” Harley said. It wasn’t quite what she’d been going for, but her curiosity was piqued. “How’d you break it to them that their baby was dead?”

The frown on Jason’s face, was one of remembering, as he tried to pull the memories long ago back. She had to pause doing his makeup because the furrows in his brow were so deep. “I’d never met them before. Didn’t really know their names, or where they were. Mom never talked about them, but their number was on her emergency contacts. The cops dialled the number for me and when my grandmother answered, I explained who I was. I said I was Jason, and I was her grandson. She asked me how Catherine was and I… I lied at first.

“I told them she was okay. That she was just asleep. Then she asked how I got their number and I said I found it on my mom’s phone and was wondering if they could pick me up. That we were at a police station. She sighed, as if she’d been expecting as much, and asked what happened, and then… Then I started crying, I think. I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and I told her then. I just blurted it out and told her mom was dead and I couldn’t save her.”

Jason stared off into nothing, his eyes vacant of expression.

Harley frowned. “Well, what happened then? Did they come get you?”

Blinking, Jason shook his head. “Um… no. The police officer took the phone from me and then, I waited around the cop shop for a few days, and they gave up trying to contact them again. They changed the number or something, and a social worker came and I got put in a home.”

“Whoa.” Harley pouted. “That’s cold.”

Jason snorted. “Yeah. I guess.”

Harley hummed and resumed bleaching Jason’s skin. “Well, my news ain’t that sad. My news is a good thing.”

“A good thing?”

Harley nodded, a smile spreading out across her face. “Can you keep a secret, birdboy?”

Jason raised his eyebrow. “Who am I going to tell?”

Not liking his sass, she squeezed his cheeks between her fingers, leaving cakes of makeup under her nails. “You could tell Mistah J, and that’d ruin everything.”

Jason grimaced, trying to pull back. He managed to speak between pufferfish lips. “I won’t tell anyone.”

With a smile on her face, Harley let go of Jason’s cheeks slowly, finger by finger and fixed up the makeup she’d taken off. When it was all smooth again, Harley got out some eyeliner. “I’m pregnant,” she said, softer than she had spoken in years.

She held Jason’s eyelid out straight, trailing black beneath the lid as his eyeball swung wildly in his head, looking up at her and then down to her stomach. “How?”

“Did no one ever teach you about the birds and the bats, Boy Blunder? When and mommy and daddy love each other very much–”

“Not  _how_ ,” Jason exclaimed, harshly. “Why? Why would you and Joker–”

“Cause I love him and that’s what people in love do.”

“–Bring a  _child_  into  _your world_?”

Harley froze, eyeliner pointing dangerously close to Jason’s eyeball. “What’d you say?”

Jason glared at her. “You heard me,” he said daringly.

She turned her pointed fingers into a fist around the pencil and aimed it at the black widening target in the middle of a sea of blue. “Why would you say something so mean to me?” she snapped.

Though the boy was afraid, a fact made evident by the tremble of his body, he stared her down, scrunching up his face. “You’re a psychiatrist, Harley. What do you think is gonna happen to a kid brought up in Joker’s Fun Land? You think he’s gonna survive? Joker slaps you around for not obeying. You think he’s gonna be nice to a kid who won’t stop screaming?”

“You don’t know nothin’,” Harley whispered, pressing the pencil to his eyes. “Mistah J and I are gonna be  _great_  parents.”

“I’ve had you as parents,” Jason spat, and it was the first time he had no regard for his own life. He hadn’t fought back. He’d struggled, and he’d moaned, but it was the first-time Jason looked like he had some pluck in him. “Less dark, for sure. But my Dad belted my mom, as much as Joker beats you up. And maybe you two have some sick twisted game going on, but a kid ain’t gonna know that. A kid is gonna see his Dad beating up his Mom and coming for him next.”

Harley withdrew the pencil and slapped Jason so hard his head turned, but he didn’t even look phased. He glared at the floor. He huffed and whispered, “The best thing you could do for that child is kill it, because even if you gave it away, you know there’s a chance Joker could find him, tie him to a chair and beat him black and blue to use him against you. And you know it wouldn’t take much to push him over that edge.”

Harley hit him again, his head spinning the other way. She stared at him, breaths coming out jagged from her throat, but he just lifted his head up to meet her gaze. “You’re mad because you know I’m right.” Every word hit Harley in the chest in a way that made her uncomfortable. It made her remember a time before makeup and before Halloween outfits, sitting at the desks in Gotham University Library and laughing with friends.

It reminded her of her mother’s warm arms around her shoulder as they waved her perfect normal suburban father off to work. Pigtails that weren’t covered in blood, but with streamers around the crown, and her body clad in Gotham High’s black and red as she stood at the top of the pyramid.

She must have been drifting for a minute because when she shook off those memories, wiping a tear away from the corner of her eyes Jason's face had shifted into something more worried than determined. It took her a moment to figure he was worried about her. She looked at his makeup that she’d smudged again. “You’re not a complete moron, I see,” Harley muttered.

“I have experience in this kind of stuff,” Jason replied. “My whole apartment building was filled with kids with deadbeat dads and crazy moms.”

“I’m not gonna be crazy,” Harley said, straightening out his eye again. She went and did the top of the lid again. “Just eccentric.”

“And Joker? What about him?” Jason asked.

Harley’s minds eye shuttered as images danced through her mind like they were playing on a broken film projector. Images of Joker, wearing suspenders, holding up a bouncing baby, with blonde hair and green eyes. He was holding the wriggly baby over the kitchen sink, all dripping and wet from a bath. She was dressed like a pin-up girl in a pencil skirt and a corset, her hair up in curls, beaming at her tiled kitchen, all neatly decorated.

“You think he’s gonna care nearly half as much as you do?” Jason asked, interrupting her daydream. “He barely cares about you now.” He nodded around the place. “He’s up there, chasing the only thing he cares about. Batman.”

Harley was flooded with memories, of anniversaries missed or spent ruining the streets for Batman’s attention and the times she’d been hurt or thrown in jail by him and for him. She thought of it all, logically sorting the memories from  _bad_  to  _worse_  and still, she looked back down at Jason, both his eyes painted black and the J on his cheek outlined and hummed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Birdboy. Joker, he loves me. And he’s gonna love this kid.”

“No. That kid is gonna love you. Just like I loved my Mom.” Tears were making her eyes blurry, and Harley smudged the tail of the J, but fixed it, making the line thicker. “And one day, he’s gonna step in front of your Dad, just like I did. And he is gonna get the shit belted out of him, just like me too. Because that’s what men like Joker and my father, who hit their women do. Eventually, they realise they got twice the options.”

Harley stared down at him and said nothing. She reached over and grabbed the bright red lipstick, and held Jason’s face to force a grin on it. “I’ve no time to plead and pine; I’ve no time to be flirty…” She rubbed the lipstick over his lips, and part of his cheeks, giving him a big clownish smile. She grinned, staring down at her work. “Kiss me quick, and then you’re gone.” She leant down and kissed him, stealing some of his lipstick and making him gag. She laughed, jumping off his lap. “ _Pop_  goes the birdy.”

Jason shuddered. She knew he hated that song. Knew that he would hate it forever and that the tune would haunt his every waking thought when he finally got out. Because he was going to get out. Joker had told her as much.

“You look pretty. Like a Joke,” Harley grinned, pleased with the effect of the white and red over Jason’s face.

“I’m not a clown,” he spat. “I’m a Bat.”

“Not for long, Boy-O!”

Both Harley and Jason looked towards the door on the landing and Joker was leaning against the rail, staring down at them with his hands on his hip. “Oh-ho, what do we have here?” Joker bent so far forward he looked as if he was going to fall, but he pulled back before he tipped Jason closer then quickly moved to run down the stairs into the basement.

“You like it Puddin’? I did it all just like you asked,” Harley beamed up at him.

Joker hummed, leaning in close to Jason, breathing over his face. Jason, still fuelled by his earlier confidence, stared Joker in the eye as he assessed the makeup. Maybe it was that Jason was looking Joker in the eye, glaring at him. Maybe it was because Harley did his makeup wrong. But Joker growled and threw his hands up in the air. “No! No, no, no! This is all wrong!”

He reached down and grabbed the crowbar from the trolley, swinging it around and hitting Jason in the stomach, knocking him backwards in the chair, so he was sprawled out on the floor. Joker turned to Harley, lifting the crowbar and aiming it at her. “He’s a  _Bat_ , not a  _Joke_. He can’t look like  _me_. Batman won’t recognise him!” He lifted the crowbar to swing it at Harley, but Jason coughed.

“You think Bats is gonna care what I look like? He’ll know who I am. He’ll come get me.”

Joker tilted his head back towards Jason and laughed. “You think he’s gonna come for you?” He turned around, going for Jason and Harley let out the breath that she’d been holding and looked down to where her hands were cupping her stomach.

She wasn’t sure why, but she was blinking back tears, and she looked over at Jason.

 _He distracted Joker for me. He did that for me_.

Her fingers sprawled out over the skin of her stomach and her gut twisted as the crowbar landed on Jason again. And again. And again.

She could imagine him, a gangly kid with no meat on his bones in clothes too big for his frame, putting himself in front of his Old Man’s blows, so his Mama didn’t have to take any. She could see it, in perfect HD vision, the way his body would crumple and bend under punches, and how parts of him would break because he loved the woman who birthed him so much.

For the first time since she’d helped Joker carry down the bird down into the basement, she wasn’t annoyed at his presence, or giggling or having fun hitting him.

For the first time, Harley  _actually_ felt sorry for the kid. More than that, a part of her wanted to push Joker away from him. To take the blows for him until Joker’s rage had passed and to hide Jason away and get him some help. To get him home to his family and get someone to take care of him, because even after all Harley did to him, he distracted the Joker, protecting her and her unborn child.

 _Don’t be an idiot Harley,_ she told herself.  _Just go. Get out._

So she did.

She took a step back and then went to the stairs, making her escape before Joker could turn his attention back to her. Jason was bleeding red over his white face and she shook her head, climbing up the remaining steps and leaving the basement altogether.

She closed the door and listened to Joker, beating Jason half to death. She pulled her knees up to her chin and stared at the ground, holding her stomach. She undid her pigtails and pulled them out of her hair. They were too tight around her scalp, and she needed the relief.

The grunts from the other room echoed up through the doors, and she wondered how they hadn’t been heard yet. They were beneath Arkham, sure, but the sounds of Jason being beaten were so loud. She ran all of her fingers through her scalp before settling her palms on her ears to drown them out.

She sang, softly in a frightened whisper. “Swing the crowbar at the bird, don’t have to make him purdy. That’s the way the Joker plays…” Jason screamed on the other side of the door, and Joker cackled long into the night, finally managing to elicit more than just a grunt from the Bird’s bloodstained lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually one chapter I feel terrible about writing. Mostly because the ending disturbs me... I mean, I wrote it but I didn't like reading it or rereading it or editing it.
> 
> I don't know why, but it unsettles me more than Catherine or Sheila's stories, which were both pretty bleak.
> 
> Sorry if it unsettles you too.


	8. Talia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He would never be her son. He would never be Bruce's son. Not truly.
> 
> But for her beloved, she would pretend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so firstly I have to apologise to all of you, because the last chapter was so disturbing. Even I thought it was disturbing so, really, truly sorry. Also have to apologise because I was going to post this yesterday, but due to unforeseen circumstances (me still managing to be hung over from Saturday night... The year of the 25th birthdays are worse than 21sts because you lose the ability to recover) I was unable to post this (read: Got home from work, sat on my bed and passed out with my shoes on).
> 
> Second, I don't like this being the last chapter of Mothers, but I wanted to do it chronologically... But it was a really hard chapter to write because I kept having to delete chunks of it because it gave way too much away. So if it seems clunky, it's because it bloody is and I hate it but I don't know how to fix it right now. I might fix it later, when I've got some time, but this is it for now.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it despite the terribleness.

“I can’t be with you.”

Those fives word had spurred something in Talia al Ghul that led her to her life’s most significant failure.

Jason Peter Todd.

It had been over a year ago. The Joker had finally made a move on Batman that he had not been expecting. The Prince of Crime and the mentally insane had not gone after the Gothamites, or the other dredge of society, or someone high up in power, that Batman deemed worthy of his protection.

No.

Joker had gone after Batman’s son.

Jason.

Of course, Talia had done this before. During the formative years of their relationship, she had kidnapped the eldest, Richard, when he was still Robin. She hadn’t hurt the child because she hadn’t wanted to fall in ill-favour of Bruce Wayne. In fact, years later, Richard would tell her it was the more pleasant of kidnappings he’d experienced, having received a bowl of cereal after waking up from being knocked out. It wasn’t hard to please that child.

She’d only taken him to lead Batman into a trap, and it had worked, but Bruce had bested her best men artfully. He was a powerful fighter and a skilled tactician. She remembered playing chess with him while he’d been training under her father’s tutelage and how he'd bested her every time. Somehow he was always two steps ahead of her, and it made sense then that her trap had failed.

Though he'd ruined her plot to bring him back into the Assassins fold, Talia couldn’t help but forgive him because she could never stay mad at Bruce.

But this was different.

It had been two months since Jason was taken when Talia saw Bruce again and he was wrecked.

“Let me take your mind of the darkness,” she said, tugging on his hands and trying to take him from the rooftop. She wished to lead him back to her hotel, and bring his head down on her lap. She’d heard The Cat, and The Amazonian were patrolling the streets, searching for the boy. Of course, some of the other heroes had joined Gotham too, to help them along, including the Alien and the Speedster, but none had stayed as long as the other women in Bruce’s life.

Talia linked their fingers together, and he looked away from her, so Talia moved closer and lifted his chin up so she could see his eyes through the cowl. “I wish to show you something.”

Talia had decided then, that she was going to tell Bruce the full depth of her feelings for him. She wanted to show him how they could be a family. It was the thing she could give him that Selina and Diana couldn't and all she wanted, was to push Bruce away from the Justice League and bring him back into the League of Assassins.

But she pulled him along, and he pulled away. “I can’t be with you.”

Talia had begged him to explain, but Batman had only managed a few words on how he needed to find Robin, and until then their relationship would not continue. That Jason had to be his priority because nothing mattered more to Bruce than him and his safety.

It baffled Talia. How could Bruce choose a street rat over the heir to the Demon? For the world's greatest detective, the fact that he could not see how her power and his money would get the world was confusing. They would not even need Ra’s al Ghul's army. They could build their own.

Destiny did not work in fickle ways, and Bruce was Talia’s destiny. He denied the fates but not allowing them to be one. She had already proven that to her father but explaining that to Bruce – the stubborn, unbelieving, good-man that he was – had proven to be more difficult than she had first imagined.

To be more difficult than the Demon’s Head.

He indeed was worthy of Talia’s affection.

She decided that to truly win her beloved’s heart she needed to gift him with something that he could not buy but desired more than anything else.

Talia decided to find Jason.

She would bring him home and lay him at Bruce’s feet like a cat with a bird in its mouth.

The Clown Prince was good, but he wasn’t as good as Talia. At first, she made the mistake of underestimating his cunning and trickery. She went to the amusement parks he bought out with his surprisingly deep pockets, and searched high and low but could not find a trace of Jason. It wasn’t until he broke out of Arkham, only to be happily lead back in again did Talia realise that Joker was using the Asylum as a base of operations.

She broke in one night and watched the security feed to see the Joker’s wench slip between the bars of a drain outlet, and into the basement below. She had already memorised the layout of Arkham and knew that there was a tunnel that led to an old ward that had been shut down due to a fire. She was confident Jason was down there and followed Harley into the pits until she heard the distinct sound of torture.

“Well hello there.”

Talia almost jumped out of her skin, not used to having someone sneak up on her and spun around, ready to attack. She held up her blades, pointing them at the Clown in the Purple suit and waited for him to pounce.

But he never did.

He pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning on and circled her as a panther circled its prey. He was more calculated than he let on. A Master Planner. Almost as good as Bruce. “What do we have here? Did Ra’s send his baby girl here to check up on me?” He tilted his head to the side, studying her carefully.

“I am here of my own accord. I know you have Batman’s Robin, and I am here to take him from you.” Talia kept Joker in her line of sight and carefully moved so her back was against the wall and no surprising could leap out at her again. “If you relinquish him now, you will come to no harm, Clown.”

“Well that’s no fun,” Joker said, stopping so he could lean back against the tunnel wall across from her, their bodies on either end of the tight space. “You know, I’m quite fond of Assassin League torture. There’s an art to it that the hoi polloi just don’t seem to appreciate. I mean, I’ve had many people come and torture  _Jason_...” He grinned his mouth around his name, and Talia stopped herself from reacting. If he knew Jason’s name, then he could know anything about the Bat. “... But it's all just brute force and  _bam, bam, bam_.” He smashed his fist into his open hand. “But watching your father carve into him...” Joker’s voice lowered, like into one of desire and hunger. “Oooh, Tal, let me tell you. Your father... he’s an artist.” He grinned, raising one eyebrow and pushed himself back off the wall, turning his back on Talia to walk away.

“Talk to your father, dollface. I’m sure he’ll tell you Arkham is  _my_  stomping ground, and  _you_ are not allowed to take The Bird.”

Talia stared after Joker until his purple suit disappeared into the shadows. She let him go, nervous about what he’d said and determined, if it was just a game to get her to leave him alone long enough to move Jason, she could find him again. If she had found him in Arkham, she could track him anywhere.

She returned to Nanda Parbat and confronted her father about Jason Todd and The Joker.

“What do you mean a deal?” Talia had asked, watching Ra’s sharpen his sword. “Why would you make a deal with The Joker? What use is he to us?”

Ra’s didn’t answer right away. He kept sharpening his sword, focused on his reflection. “Bruce Wayne is running around the city like a madman, trying desperately to find this street rat.”

“Yes. And if we find him and deliver him, we will be in his favour! He will be more inclined to come to us and–”

“We have all the reasons in the world for him to come to us,” Ra’s said, lifting the sword and inspecting it. He tutted his tongue and sighed, pulling the sword back down to the table and continuing his job. “What I need right now, is not Bruce Wayne’s loyalty, Daughter. What I need right now, is Bruce Wayne’s attention on something other than the city itself. I need the detective distracted while I tunnel through to the Lazurus Pit beneath Gotham, and until that is over, you will not interfere with the Clown.”

Ra’s lifted the sword back up, pointing straight at Talia’s neck. She wore a leather top that covered her throat and tied around the back of her neck, and Ra’s traced the front of the leather with the tip of his blade, dragging it across the dense material, and slicing it in half just before the top of her skin. “Perfect,” he murmured, pulling the sword back to his side. He inspected it once again for good measure, turning on his heel and walking towards his room. “Stay away from the Clown, Talia. It would be in all our best interest for you to do so.”

Talia was very much in love with Bruce Wayne, and she wanted him to love her back, but she could not deny her father. She was in equal parts afraid and in awe of him, and though she wanted to remove herself from beneath his thumb, she still had much to learn from The Demon’s Head.

So she stayed far away from Gotham, and the Bats, but kept tabs on how Jason was doing in Arkham.

She was slightly confused when a report came back from the streets of Gotham that said The Joker had killed Robin, but another from Arkham which stated Jason was being moved into a different section of the underground. Unsure of what was going on, she decided to pop back in on Gotham to check it out, getting there just in time for Jason Todd’s funeral.

The funeral was fine, as far as funerals went. In the League, bodies were burned and spread over the valley, but there was no body to bury. Talia hadn’t been invited, but when she’d heard, she arrived and thought she could worm her way back into Bruce’s affections by being supportive. She considered maybe, that would be good enough.

But Bruce ignored her all throughout the ceremony, choosing to stay with Richard and his new Robin, Timothy, stayed close by the entire time. She noticed Bruce wouldn’t let go of Richard’s hand throughout the burial of an empty coffin. Jason was given the honour of having his epitaph in the Wayne ceremony, his stone beside the stone of Bruce’s parents.

 _He truly cares for his street rat,_  Talia thought, and the idea made her curious.

Talia had never cared that much for someone beyond herself, but Bruce was clearly crushed. Richard, Alfred, Barbara, and even the new boy who had never met his predecessor, were all visibly upset but Bruce was…

Talia had seen him tortured and that did not compare to the pain on his face.

After the ceremony, there were drinks in the Manor, and Talia was going to go but was stopped in her tracks.

Barbara Gordon stood in front of her, face red, and eyes narrowed. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest and barred Talia’s way up the hill to Wayne Manor. Bruce, Richard, Alfred and Tim had left first with Barbara’s father. The others at the funeral – the Justice League, Teen Titan members and some of the criminals who were also Bruce’s friends – were milling about and heading up slowly. A few stopped and were watching Barbara, including Selina Kyle and the alien. “Leave, Talia,” Barbara said wearily. “Whatever you’re doing here, Bruce can’t cope today.”

Talia narrowed her eyes at Barbara. “I’m here to share my condolences.”

“You don’t have feelings let alone condolences,” Barbara muttered.

“Babs! You okay?” Selina called out, not too far away, beside Poison Ivy. The young speedster, Wallace, paused alongside his aunt and uncle halfway up the hill and whispered something to them before walking back down. Talia realised, there were a few walking back down.

She knew all the heroes.

Black Canary, Speedy, Superman, the youngest Green Lantern. They were all walking towards Barbara, ready for a fight with the Daughter of the Demon. “I’m okay,” Barbara called back, but that didn’t stop the army of heroes moving to be beside her. To show strength in numbers.

Talia hated them all.

“Every time you’re near, you break parts of Bruce, and he doesn’t need that today,” Barbara said. Wallace reached her first, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “Just leave them alone today. Take your League and leave. This is a family occasion.”

“And the cat and the weed?” Talia asked.

“Selina is Jason’s family,” Barbara hissed. “And Ivy’s promised to be on her best behaviour.”

Talia’s lip twitched as the alien came even closer. “And if I promise?”

“You break a promise faster than you can break a face.”

Talia chuckled. “An impressive compliment, Miss Gordon. But flattery will get you nowhere.”

The alien came up behind Barbara and Wallace and rested his large palms on either of their shoulders, encompassing them with his massive form. “Barbara, Wally. We’re all heading inside,” the alien said.

But Barbara didn’t move, eyeing off with Talia. “Talia’s just leaving. Clark, can you make sure she’s gone?”

He eyed Talia, raising his eyebrow, asking if it was necessary. She hadn’t brought any of the League with her because if her father had found out what she was doing that day, there would be a fight. On the hill of heroes around Wayne Manor, Talia knew she was largely outnumbered. She could walk out alive, but not easily.

“It’s fine,” she said, wrapping her scarf around her head. She slipped her glasses up her nose and smiled. “I know when I’m not wanted. Tell Bruce the roses were from me.”

Talia left the funeral and headed straight for the Asylum, convinced that Jason was not dead. Of course, she managed to be right, and there Jason was, alive and well.

Injured, maybe even beyond repair, but he was murmuring and whispering things in his unconscious state. “There. You’ve seen him,” Harley said. Jason was tied to a metal chair in shackles even though he was clearly not waking up anytime soon, and Harley was sat on a chair, holding a Jack-in-the-Box. “Now you mind leavin’? I’m kinda in the middle of something here.”

Talia had no time for the sideshow of Joker’s act. “Where’s The Clown?”

“He’s busy,” she deadpanned. “Now ya seen the Bird, so beat it!”

“What is your intention for Jason?” Talia asked, earning the ire from Harley in the form of a narrowed eye. “Do you plan on killing him?”

“What’s it to ya?” she asked.

Talia smirked. “I have plans for the boy.”

Harley stood up, putting the Jack-in-the-Box down. She stepped in front of Jason territorially. “Yeah? Well so do we.”

Talia hummed. “If your plans _don’t_ involve killing him, get in contact.” She took one last look at the broken boy and decided if she couldn’t save Jason, she would avenge him. In the meantime, she would wait and see. 

* * *

Talia stayed away from Jason and Bruce and Gotham. Far away, in Nanda Parbat. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have her own birds listening for news. Her father could have his plan, but Talia had her own. A long game, to worm her way into Bruce’s heart and the easiest way to do so, was through his so-called-sons.

When she heard Jason escaped with Deathstroke, it only took her a few months to track him down in a small town in Peru.

Slade was in the hotel room they were staying in. It was more expensive than the mercenary’s usual tastes. He had bought some women, and she distinctly remembered Jason despising such things. He was most likely avoiding Slade altogether, which was why he was at a bar.

The bar was on the beach, dug into the white sand and the sunset was glistening over the horizon. Talia didn’t even need to look for Jason when she got there, because he stood out like a diamond in the sun, catching every ray of the dying evening light.

Not just because he was in a drunken bar fight, throwing bodies every which way. Or the raw sound of terror and anger that he was making in his gut. But because he was beautiful, in a way Talia had always appreciated.

His skin had tanned in the South American sun, and his hair was as dark as her beloved’s, and his eyes were just as blue. Talia didn’t think Jason was Bruce’s true heir. Legalities and papers counted little against blood, but she could see Bruce had chosen well. He resembled Bruce’s heir, and she loved Bruce for more than just his mind and his skills.

She loved him for his physique and colouring that matched so well beside her own.

The scars on Jason’s body told a different tale.

They engraved in every inch of him from over a year of torture, and they were the imperfections. A true son of Bruce’s would never succumb to such things. Jason was weak, but she could give him strength. She decided, she would.

A reveller grabbed Jason’s arm and tried to force him down. He got Jason down on his knees from behind, but Jason shouted like a wild beast and with a swift motion, used the back of his head to knock him out cold. He jumped up and bull charged his next attacker, lifting them on his shoulder and smashing them into the bar. Glasses broke around them, some catching Jason in the face. Flecks of blood erupted on his skin, and he turned, screaming viciously.

His face was red, and a vein bulged in his neck and in his hands. There was something unnatural about his anger.

Two men grabbed him or tried to, but he threw them off.

He had no control.

Talia heard a gun and looked to see the bartender aiming a shotgun at Jason’s back from behind the bar. Without thinking, she launched forward and knocked the gun out of his hands, and brought his head down to the table. He fell, and Jason spun around, having heard the commotion and laid his eyes on her for the first time.

Like a bull spotting a red flag, his nostrils flared. “You,” he growled.

“Jason,” she greeted him. “How are–”

But she didn’t get to finish, because Jason ran through the sand to her and flung himself over the bar, landing his feet on her chest. She was shocked and hadn’t been expecting such an attack, but it set her on alert and the next rabid punch he tried to deliver, she swiped under and struck a blow to his neck.

He gasped, breathless as the wind was knocked out of his lungs.

The benefit of Jason attacking in a rage was that Talia had the upper hand.

She straightened up and delivered six sharp and precise blows to his neck, back, shoulders, and knees, cutting off blood supply sharply in a way that made his limbs useless and knocked him out cold.

Talia sighed and stared at him, a mess of limbs and useless muscles. “Well, that wasn’t how I wanted it to go.”

She looked at the other patrons in the bar, who were all staring in various states of shock and Talia looked back to one of her men and pointed to the lump that was Jason. “Collect him. We’ll take him back to Nanda Parbat.”

And that was how Talia al Ghul became Jason Todd’s mentor.

* * *

“Breathe,” Talia instructed Jason.

“If I wasn’t breathing, I’d be dead,” Jason growled,

Talia rolled her eyes at him, pacing the room behind him.

It was evident to Jason, after their first meeting – and subsequently, their second and third – that he had some anger issues. He was erratic and unable to get through more than a few sentences before throwing a tantrum like a three-year-old. Only his outbursts didn’t end with throwing toys but throwing people.

She promised to train him and show him how to harness all the excess anger he quite suddenly found himself with. After a few days of threats and promising to end her life if he ever got out of the room she’d locked him in, Talia had delivered the one thing she knew Jason loved more than the world.

Books.

To be specific classic books.

Ovid, the letters of Mara bar Serapion, Valmiki’s Ramayana, Sappho, The Histories of Herodotus…

But she noted, through the camera she had installed in his room, that despite the vast array of topics she left him, he found the Epic Cycle and read it from the beginning, finally quiet.

After two long weeks of reading, he’d calmed enough to ask to talk.

“Why did you take me?” Jason asked, first, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room. The books were by his side, like a calming scent. Talia was in a robe, sat across from him with her legs crossed too, and she was studying him, curiously.

Talia smiled. “Well, to deliver you to my beloved, of course.”

“I’d prefer his head delivered to me on a plate,” Jason snapped.

Talia was surprised but kept that off her face. Jason, more than Richard and the new boy, Timothy, had always been in utter awe of Bruce. He loved that man with unwavering devotion, blind to his faults, even as he listed them off like a grocery list. Years ago, when Talia and Bruce began their tryst, Jason had the nerve to threaten Talia. He said that if she ever broke Bruce’s heart, he’d rip hers out while it still beat in her chest and left it at that, but she’d found his determination to intimidate her amusing, and his courage idiotic.

“You hate your father now?” Talia mused.

“He is  _not_  my father.” She could see Jason’s face becoming red, anger rising back up inside of him.

Talia couldn’t agree more, but she smiled pettily. “Your  _father_  misses you.” Jason ground his teeth together fists balled on either side of him. She watched as his chest rose and fell and Talia knew what Jason’s problem was. “You are angry.”

“He  _left_  me,” Jason snapped. “He left me to rot in Arkham!”

That argument was debatable. Technically, Talia had left Jason to rot in Arkham, so Bruce could tear Gotham down brick by brick, trying to find him. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. “I can teach you to control that anger. To harness it. So that you won’t constantly find yourself raging through bar fights, and so that you can regain your focus.”

Jason snarled at her but, closed his mouth, frowning at himself. It seemed that he hadn’t realised how infuriated he was becoming until she pointed it out to him. One thing she had never been able to flaw Jason on, was that he was always willing to learn a skill that would help him survive. He down at his fists and concentrated on them, trying to unfurl them but the more he tried, the more frustrated he became, and the angrier he got.

“Pick up a book,” Talia instructed.

Jason glared at her but did as instructed. He moved stiffly, but took a book into his hands, squeezing the spine so hard his fingers left dents in the leather. “Read the first chapter. Keep reading until you are calm again.” Talia got up to her feet and nodded. “We will start your training in the morning.”

“What training?” he asked. He stilled hadn’t opened the book.

“You will see.”

It had been a month since then, and she watched Jason copy the Arabic alphabet onto the page, perfectly copying the thin and thick lines with the Java pen. He was sat on a low table, on the floor, dressed in the soft gi that clothed all young apprentices of the League. Most of the tables in Nanda Parbat were designed low, with the expectation of the formal dining room and the desks like the one in Jason’s room. But they were in her room now, and he was not working properly. “You still aren’t breathing,” Talia scolded.

“How would you like me to breathe?” Jason growled.

“With the strokes. Like always,” Talia said, moving in behind him.

It was Jason’s turn to roll his eyes. “I  _am_.”

“You’re  _not_.” Talia kicked the pillow he was sitting on, and his hand flew out, smearing ink across the page. “If you were breathing as you should have been, that would not have been a distraction. Maybe we should move onto the kelani. You do so much better with the paint and with ink.”

Jason let out a growl of frustration and Talia glared at him. “You’re being insufferable.”

“You’re unbearable.”

“What is wrong with you today?” Talia snapped, finally having enough. “Am I doing all of this for nothing?”

“Maybe!” he yelled, throwing his pen across the table. He crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s been four weeks, and I don’t  _feel_  different.”

“You may not feel different, but you have vastly improved. Four weeks ago, you would have tried to fight me by now.”

“I still may,” Jason huffed, letting his shoulders drop and pouting at the table. Pouting was good, Talia had discovered. As childish as it may have been, pouting meant Jason understood he was wrong.

It was getting quite easy to read him, and she studied his shoulders and body language and realised there was frustration there. He was upset with how slow the progress was. “This is not going to be easy.” Talia moved around the table, and he looked up, eyes following her with distrust. “Anger is strong and fierce as it is, and yours has had two years to make a fortress in your body. To control it, you must be stronger, and breathing is not simply taking in oxygen. It will be the water that shall douse the flames, and allow you to think straight, and clear.”

Jason’s head snapped up to her, and he opened his mouth to bark something, but shut it again, his hand trembling. He growled low and snapped, “Teach me Arabic.”

Out of all the profanities Talia had considered him shouting, that had not been one of them. “Pardon?”

“I want you to teach me Arabic. I don’t know what the fuck I’m drawing, and it’s annoying. I feel like I’m doing paint by numbers, so if I know what I’m writing then maybe I won’t be so pissed off.”

Talia considered this. There was also a tactical advantage for Jason to know Arabic, as she communicated with many of the servants in her native tongue, but she was intrigued by his proposition. “All right. I will teach you Arabic. But you must do me a favour in turn.”

“Being a good little boy and not trying to kill you isn’t enough?”

Talia ignored him. She had been telling Shiva the other day that her pupils needed to learn how to overcome stronger fighters. When Jason was raging on Titan, he was almost as strong as Bane, all packed into his boyish frame. “You will help me train some students. I need a sparring partner their size, and you do not appear formidable so they will be surprised.”

“Thank you?” Jason said, unsure of whether he was being complimented. “Fine, I’ll help you train brats. But I don’t want to wake up at five in the morning.”

“You will wake up when I tell you to,” Talia said, stepping around him. She took one of his pens and wrote out a single word. “Now pick up the kelani and keep breathing.  _Marhabaan_  means hello. That is how you write it. Now breathe.”

Jason gritted his teeth, but breathed in deep and took out the thicker brush, thin paint and a larger piece of paper, and began to write. “Mar- _ha_ -baan.”

“ _Marhabaan,_ ” Talia repeated. “Not so thick.”

Jason nodded slowly. “ _Marhabaan_.” He mimicked her accent and Talia couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

She went over Arabic with him as if he was a small child, teaching him  _ta_  was for  _tafaha_. It was quite miraculous how the study and calligraphy stopped his fidgeting and sharpened his anger into something more direct. It was also a marvel at how quickly he picked up the language, able to have small conversations in a little over a month.

He had also learnt the basics of conversational Spanish while he was in South America and some words of Portuguese. He had a mind for languages. _Just like Bruce,_ she thought with a smile.

* * *

Three weeks into training, Jason was escorted into her study by a guard – he had limited privileges in Nanda Parbat, and had yet to earn the one to walk around by himself. He fixed Talia with a glare. “This has to stop,” he said.

Talia did not look up from her ledgers. She was tracking her Assassins, reading their assignments and assessing that they were done to the League’s standard. “What?”

Jason’s unimpressed face said that she already knew and Talia put her pen down to steeple her fingers. “Languages for training. That was the deal.”

Jason scoffed. “That’s not training. I broke that kid in half.”

Talia frowned, knowing exactly which kid he was speaking of. He wasn’t wrong. The boy was still recovering from where his ribs caved into his chest. Talia had spurred Jason on to the point where he beat the child senseless, using his rage against him. “That’s how we train within the League. The weakest must conquer the strongest.”

“I don’t want to ever do that again,” Jason snapped. “Not to a little kid who can’t fight back.”

Talia frowned. The boy had been perfectly capable of fighting back. But he had let the same thing that made Jason lose focus, cloud his judgement. He raged, and Jason raged and though they were both messy and unorganised, but Jason’s size made him the heavy hitter and he came out just fine. “But you’re more than happy to beat the girl?” Talia teased.

Jason flinched. The girl got on his nerves. She was older than the boy but younger than Jason. Fifteen, but small for age. Small enough that Jason assumed she was a child and no one ever corrected him.

She’d beaten him enough times that he considered them equals. But the other children he fought frightened him. Not because they were particularly skilled, but because Jason could sometimes lose himself in a fight, and wake up with bloody fists and broken bodies around him. “I don’t want to hurt kids,” he said. “The girl can hold her own, but kids who break like twigs… I don’t want to do that, Talia.”

The boy was in the medical bay, and they were healing him. “You will do what I ask until I stop asking or I will bring Bruce here, today, to take you home.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “That’s not my home.”

“Neither is Nanda Parbat unless you’ve reconsidered my offer of joining us.”

Jason glared at her, fists balled up on either side. He stayed quiet until he huffed and loosened his frame. “Stop making me your enforcer. I’ll fight them, but I won’t beat them for you.”

Talia nodded. “That is fair.” She picked up the pen again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She did. When Talia went to collect him one for his lessons she had a guard with her, and he stood at the door Talia entered the room.

Jason was on the balcony, overlooking the valley of sand and leaning against the railing, humming a soft, slow tune as he watched a bird perched next to him. She walked outside, careful not to startle him and slid up beside him. “Your voice is very pretty.”

Jason frowned, looking up at her and glowering. He held out his hand, filled with bread to the animal and it jumped forward and pecked into his open palm. “Nothing about me is pretty, T.”

Talia shrugged. “You are very pretty and surprisingly soft for a warrior Jason Todd.” She looked at the sand desert feathers of the bird and its striking blue wing. “Did Richard not used to call you Jaybird?”

Jason’s jaw twitched, and his glower increased. “What?”

“Richard. You called him Dickie, and he called you Jaybird.”

“We called each other a lot of things,” Jason growled, turning back to the bird who was about to fly away. He offered it more food and coaxed it back. Gently, with a touch he couldn’t have mustered a few weeks before, he ran his finger over the bird’s head. “Mostly Dickhead and Asshole.”

“He called you Jaybird,” Talia said, not bothering with his disrespect. “I remember my father had thrown you off a building while you were unconscious. You were fifteen, and you were in Blüdhaven with your brother. Richard screamed out  _Robin_  and dove over the railing to catch you, and he did. Father escaped, and I had too, but I waited to see what you would do. To see if you would come after us.

“But Dick carried you to his bike, and you woke up as he climbed on behind you and called you Jaybird.” Talia pointed to the bird.

Jason frowned, his finger on the creature’s head faltering. “I only mention it because that bird is called a Ground Jay. It is, technically, a Jaybird. I find it interesting that it came here, of all places in the desert, to land on your balcony.”

Jason’s finger faltered, but he resumed his gentle strokes when the bird pecked at his palm again. “Are we going?” Jason asked softly.

Talia smiled. “Maybe not today. You look like you’ve found your own meditation.”

Jason didn’t argue with her, content to keep touching the bird. “You have made leaps and bounds, Jason,” Talia said to him. “You are a long way from the angry boy I found in Peru.”

“I’m still angry,” Jason said. “It’s just now that it simmers beneath the surface.”

“That’s better than it exploding every which way. Anger, though powerful as it may be, can run like wildfire through the mind, and when everything is burning, we become vulnerable. No one, not even Bruce Wayne, can put out multiple fires.”

Jason paused, his hand stilling on the bird again. “What’d you say?”

Talia smirked. It was the first time she’d said Bruce’s name and Jason hadn’t raged. “The Detective is good, but if all of Gotham were burning at once, he wouldn’t know which way to turn. It would be distracting for him, and if he were to be distracted, he would be vulnerable. He would have to focus on a single fire at a time, but you and I both know how your father takes losses like personal blows.”

Jason frowned, but he didn’t shout or yell. “He’s not my father,” he murmured. He began to tremble and turned his hand over, dropping all the breadcrumbs on the railing. “I… There’s something I need to…” He didn’t even finish his sentence before he was walking towards the desk. He sat down, withdrawing a pen and a paper and began to scribble something down.

Talia watched him for a moment, his spine straight and his fists loose. The anger had left him for the moment, and it was such a change from the furious boy who she’d kidnapped from a beach bar in Peru.

He was getting better with each passing day, and regaining his focus. Though Talia had never considered Jason Bruce’s son – and Richard and Timothy would never be his family in the truest sense – she imagined it for a moment. Returning Jason, of healthy and sound mind, to a family he loved. Being Bruce’s saviour and his awe of her and the family they could be.

She would have to consider them - Richard, Jason, and Timothy - on the surface, as her own. For Bruce’s sake, she could.

She could teach the boys how to fight. They would be the Lieutenants of their army. Richard was a good leader, Timothy, a master tactician, and Jason could fight as naturally as he breathed, and with them in charge of the men, Bruce and Talia’s true heir could be primed to reign.

She looked at the bird, still pecking at its food and held her hand out to it, and tried to slip her finger beneath the creature’s claws, to bring him inside. Suddenly, she wanted to keep the bird as a reward to Jason for his triumphs and had a clear image of a cage she would put him in, trapping the beast inside. Of course, it was wild, but like any creature, it could be tamed, and Talia had always had a talent for training birds.

But as she moved her hand underneath the Ground Jay, the bird spooked and took flight, high up into the sky and away from Talia and the Assassins.

She hadn’t seen that as an omen at the time, but reflecting on it months later, maybe she should have.

* * *

When Jason Todd escaped Nanda Parbat, the first man to do so since Bruce Wayne, Talia hid away any evidence that she had ever trained him at all.

She never told her beloved his dead son was alive and plotting his revenge.

Because Jason Peter Todd was Talia al Ghul’s greatest mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh! 
> 
> Does that little marker thing say 8/9 chapters...
> 
> Oh. How silly of me.
> 
> ~ It's already up, don't worry. You can keep reading.
> 
> In completely unrelated terrifying coincides: 
> 
> This popped up on my Facebook newsfeed right after I published the Harley chapter... 
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/BabyGotLaughs/videos/1653694891365343/ 
> 
> Cute and creepy.


	9. Bruce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason just needed to get out of Gotham. He didn't care how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't edit this or the previous chapter very well. I'm exhausted and it's 5am. Please excuse all the errors.

Jason left his sniper up on the roof of Arkham Asylum, the place where it all began.

He escaped Arkham Island before he could see what Bruce had done after he shot him free of his cuffs. He didn’t want to know whether he succeeded or not because he wasn’t sure which answer would make him feel better. For four years he had dreamt of nothing but Bruce Wayne’s slow and tortured death, but when finally given the opportunity to watch it, Jason gave him a chance to survive.

It all still rattled his brain.

While Bruce had been talking to Alfred, at Killinger’s Jason made his escape. He needed to get away. He needed to breathe. He escaped onto the rooftop of the Shopping Mall, hands on his knees, trying desperately to claw for breath. He had sat, slumped against the wall, staring up at the sky hearing Bruce’s words over and over. “ _Joker got to you. I know what it’s like!”_

_“Don’t pretend to understand!” he’d shouted back._

It seeped into his subconscious, even as they fought. _Plan J. He called me his Plan J._

Jason began to question if his actions were of his own will or something Joker had manipulated him into doing and the doubt, plus the look of devastation and horror in Bruce’s eyes when he comprehended who The Arkham Knight was, got to Jason.

He sat on the rooftop of Killinger’s, the whole Siege from the first display of the toxin at Pauli’s Diner, where Jason had worn his gas mask when he’d set off a lethal dose of it, to the moment he thought he was going to make Bruce pay for everything, were meaningless. He doubted his own sanity, something which he hadn’t questioned since he left Nanda Parbat, and wondered where it went horribly wrong.

His thoughts were disturbed by a noise and Jason looked up over the construction of the rooftop and saw Scarecrow, waiting on the edge of the building, overlooking the street below. Jason hid carefully behind the tarp, shutting his eyes and knowing quite clearly what came next.

The elevator lurched on its hinges and brought with it Bruce and Jim Gordon and Jason shrunk back, suddenly terrified. _This is it,_ he reminded himself. _This is the moment Bruce is isolated._

Sure enough, when Batman and Jim walked out, Barbara was wheeled out and over, and Jim shot Batman in his armour. Jason bit his fist to stop himself from crying out, and though he was worried about Barbara, and the guilt at leaving her in the hands of a madman like Crane was tugging at him as he crept down through the scaffolding and went to the edge where Batman would have fallen.

He kept quiet, careful that the Dark Knight was harder to kill than a bullet to the chest. He’d seen Bruce riddled with bullets. He’d plucked a few of them out before, then carefully stitched them up under the guidance of Alfred, teaching him about field medicine.

Blue plastic drop sheets hung around the edge of the building and Jason saw the shadow of something inhuman through the blue, hovering where Batman fell. He crept closer, knowing that if the light only came from one side, it would hide him against the blue and moved until he stood in front of the shadow of the man he’d spent six years calling his father.

There was so much in that moment he wanted to say. Even more, he wanted to do, and the thoughts ranged from violently attacking to begging Bruce to wrap him up in his cape and take him back home. Back to the cave, and up to his room guarded by books and to lock them both inside where the only person who ever showed him unconditional love could read him to sleep again.

Batman had used the grapple hook to hold onto the side of the building while Scarecrow taunted Jim with Barbara. Jason couldn’t quite hear them over the wind, but Batman was waiting. Jason was too.

He turned his head as the scream rang out and he darted to that side of the building, just in time to see Batman swinging around and taking hold of Barbara Gordon. They free fell, and Jason watched with wide eyes as Bruce turned in mid-air and opened his wings just long enough to soften their fall, then turned again to keep the brunt of the blow-off of Barbara.

He brought in a new Batmobile, the other laying in ruins in the levels below them. Batman managed to defeat the drones that had come to attack them, then drove off with Barbara to the GCPD, Jim Gordon left in the hands of Scarecrow.

But Jason stayed back watching Gotham.

He had done the same thing earlier, standing upon another building and had thought to himself, _I did this. I brought all this down on them._

Now he was staring at the city that had birthed him. Raised him. Turned him into Robin which, at the time, had been the greatest thing in his life.

Jason couldn’t remember being happy, but he had a vague recollection that he had been. He had, had friends, and family and people who he had thought cared about him, and it was the first time in five years that he wondered if maybe…

_Joker got to you. I know what that’s like!_

What if the Joker had gotten to him?

He turned on his comm, tapping into Batman’s frequency.

“Batman, there’s a lot of people in here looking to thank you. The both of you,” Aaron Cash was someone Jason hadn’t thought of, let alone heard from in years. He was surprised at how quickly he recognised his voice, and Jason stayed silent. “It looked bad for a minute there.”

“Thanks, Aaron, but you don’t need to… Oh God.”

“What is it?” Batman’s low voice shot through the call and Jason was filled with impossible rage for a second, before it was all washed away with confusion. He waited, still not saying anything.

“I think Scarecrow is at the Movie Studios. Dad’s voice was just used to gain access.”

“Pull up a surveillance feed.”

“I’ve tried. And I can’t get a hold of Robin. He was in there, right?”

Jason was shocked at how his heart jackhammered his chest as if he had been frightened. He knew exactly what was happening and he quickly climbed back up to the roof, then used the elevator to plunge himself into the basement. There, he found his motorcycle and he and rode like the devil was chasing him across Gotham, to Panessa Studios.

He only got there in time to watch Scarecrow’s men throw Tim into the back of a van, and he cursed, a plan already formulating in his mind. He knew where Scarecrow would tell Batman to go. He only had to head them off.

He gunned the bike towards the Gotham Storage Depot.

He spotted a hardware store along the way, and pulled up his bike, smashing in the window and grabbed a canister of paint, his only idea of how to tell Batman. He chose red and, on the door next to the depot, painted a red bat.

He waited nearby, watching as Batman paused outside of the building and took a moment to stare and the fresh red paint. He looked over his shoulder and nodded once. _He knows,_ Jason thought. _Good job, old man_. He grinned at himself, and then frowned, unsure of why he had been grinning at all.

From there, it was easy. He had raided one of the militia weapons storage nearby, and when Scarecrow drove Bruce to the Asylum, he followed the car and waited for Batman to signal him.

He had thought Batman would do it before Scarecrow unmasked him, but instead, Bruce pointed to his wrist just as Scarecrow was about to dose him with a third injection. Jason then left, running out of there before he could find out how it ended and went back for his bike.

When Jason left, he turned his back on Arkham Asylum once and for all. The last time he’d left the Arkham, Jason had been far too weak to appreciate just how good it felt to have his back turned to the building. He sped off into the night towards Panessa studios, determined to leave one more message for Bruce before he left Gotham for good.

* * *

Jason hadn’t kept his own private bunker anywhere near the headquarters of his operation, in case he was betrayed by Scarecrow or any of the Rogues he was playing with. After using the rest of the red paint to redecorate Panessa Studios, Jason parked his bike outside and bypassed the security he’d installed on the old mechanics, getting inside with ease.

It wasn’t much of a home, but it wasn’t anywhere that the other Rogues or even his hired mercs knew about. He collected his things in a duffle bag, and found a half-empty packet of cigarettes on his nightstand, pocketing them.

He couldn’t have been in the bunker more than twenty minutes, but when he went outside to where he left the bike, it was gone. “Oh come on!” he growled, kicking mid-air. He was exhausted, and of course, it chose that minute to fucking _rain_ because it was Gotham, and _of course_.

He deserved it.

He glared up at the sky for punishing him and lit up a cigarette, pulling his collar around his ears the best he could and began to walk.

If he could get out of the city limits, he could hitchhike the rest of the way to somewhere with a bus stop, and from there…

Jason wasn’t sure.

There were options. He had safe houses in a few parts of the world, and in some of them, he had no criminal record. But for the time being he was tired and needed to get out of Gotham so that he could sleep and think. Because so much had happened that night, and Jason was confident he wasn’t thinking straight.

 _Just move,_ he thought to himself. _Move, and I’ll figure it out later._

So he walked, careful to avoid any stares. Only a few of his higher up lieutenants had seen his face, but he still didn’t want anyone reporting that someone had left the island with a red helmet under their arm. He followed the road out, to the highway to Metropolis. He wasn’t sure why he was heading that way. Maybe it was just because it was the closest bridge going out of the city.

Maybe it was fate.

He’d been walking, through Gotham and down the highway for more than an hour when headlights warmed his back and cast his shadow out along the bridge. Jason ignored them. It had been the first car he’d passed, but he hoped his hunched demeanour meant he would be left alone.

No such luck.

The lights high beamed and the car stopped just behind him, engine cutting off. Jason stopped, too tired for a fight but braced himself for one regardless and he turned to look over his shoulder.

He squinted through the high beams, reaching his hand up to protect his eyes and looked to see a jeep. He squinted, even more, redirecting his eyes to see past the lights and into the driver’s seat.

Jason’s heart skipped a beat.

He had seen Batman in person since he’d escaped Joker. Many times. Jason stalked his former mentor like a rabid dog tracking a fox, but Bruce Wayne…

Other than in magazines and TV appearances, Jason had avoided seeing the alter ego of his father in real life situations.

A million ways he could get away from him and the car ran through Jason’s mind. He could jump over the bridge and take his chances in the water, or run around the car and get to the forest's edge before Bruce could get out of the car, or keep running forward and cross highways, or…

The horn beeping jumped Jason out of his thoughts, and he forgot them all in that instant, staring at Bruce’s exhausted face, that had this look on it that Jason had never in his life seen before. At least, he had never seen it before on Bruce.

It was the face of heartbreak.

His face was gone when Bruce leant across the car and opened the door to the passenger’s seat.

Once again, Jason’s thoughts ran with escape plans, but with each option he formulated, Jason kept coming to the same conclusion.

Bruce would follow him and get to him before he could get away.

He walked towards the car, without properly thinking it through. He stepped inside, clutching the helmet on his lap then shut the door.

He realised how cold he was from the rain when suddenly he was in a leather seat with built-in warmers. He must have looked cold, because Bruce adjusted the temperature, then moved towards him.

Jason flinched, pulling back and moved his hands to his bag where he kept his gun but Bruce paused and held out his hand to show he meant no harm. Jason didn’t shift, watching Bruce’s fingers as they gently took his helmet and bag from his lap and moved them into the backseat.

While he was there, he managed to find a blanket and brought it back around. Jason sat very still as Bruce moved the blanket behind Jason’s back, and bundled him up in it as if Jason was a sick child.

He couldn’t deny it was warm though, and between the heated seats, the heaters and the blanket, his body cried out in relief. “Thanks,” Jason managed to say. He felt like he should say more, but he couldn’t make his brain and jaw work in conjunction with one another and, even then, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.

Bruce was just staring at him.

It was uncomfortable, but Jason couldn’t stop him any more than it appeared Bruce could control himself. The intensity of his gaze, as he catalogued every inch of him, was… overwhelming to say the least. But the flight or fight response that rushed him when Bruce lifted up his hand, ripped the air out of his lungs and without his bag of guns nearby, he pulled back against the door.

Once again, Bruce showed him his open palm, as though he was a frightened animal and promised not to hurt him. Jason didn’t move towards him, but he just waited as Bruce’s hand came closer again, and slid into his rain-soaked scalp. He swept the locks off his forehead, pushing all the hair back against his head and stared in awe.

“Jason,” he breathed disbelief colouring every aspect of Bruce’s demeanour. Jason had never seen is adopted-father look so unsure before.

The hand skirted down from Jason’s face to his cheek, his thumb brushing the ugly J on his cheek, barely acknowledging it as the hand moved down further and settled on his shoulder.

Jason stared back, maybe in just as much awe as the man he had told himself was the worst kind of person, held him. Jason couldn’t explain the strange wash of emotions that were overcoming him, but the one thing that he was suddenly certain of was that he didn’t want to kill Bruce Wayne. Not anymore.

The fingers on his shoulder squeezed, and Bruce pulled back his hand away, leaving a cold imprint where his palm had been. “Rest a bit. It’s been a long night,” Bruce said, his voice sounding more like what Jason had remembered as a child, and less dumbstruck.

He could only nod, still not able to speak, and watched Bruce start the engine.

He kept watching Bruce, unable to tear his eyes away, both out of fear that an attack would come, and the unsureness of how he got to where he was.

Tucked in, warm and pleasant, Jason began to drift into sleep. He tried to stop it, but sometime between one blink and the next, Bruce’s hand made its way over to Jason’s knee. Then, again without him really remembering how Jason’s hand rested on Bruce’s. The last time he remembered opening his eyes, Jason’s hand was underneath Bruce’s palm, as his thumb stroked his knuckles back and forth.

Jason would know later what he had to say. Much, much, much later. He needed to make sense of everything that he felt before he could force the words out. For the time being, he just concentrated on one of the things he was feeling. The feeling that came with a soft blanket and his father’s hand over his. He latched onto that and relaxed back into the car sit as Jason just let himself feel, for the first time in years, safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this was a better way of ending this as it leads up into the next story now. 
> 
> I'll post the next one by the end of the week. :)
> 
> By the way, (though this chapter didn't say Pretty) the song Something Pretty by Patrick Park is what this story is named after and it's because it came on my playlist when I was rewriting the very first chapter of this whole series (Where Bruce finds Jason on the side of the road) and I couldn't find a better song to encapsulate Jason's feelings towards himself.
> 
> So please go and listen! It's not on Spotify (much to my annoyance), but here is a YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkPxZfmr0OQ
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoyed. Please tell me if I made any errors. Or drop a line if you have questions.
> 
> Love,
> 
> ithoughtslashmeanshorror (Bianca)


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